Alice Saves Wonderland
by Last of the Lilac Wine
Summary: The wardrobe only takes one...Snow White gives birth to twin girls. Emma is protected in the wardrobe but Alice is left behind to fall prey to the Dark Curse with her mother and father. Now, in our world, she has no idea who she is, yet alone that Wonderland exists or that she's destined to save it. Jefferson/OC
1. Prologue

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

"Just push a little more m'lady. You're almost there."

Snow screamed – she was being turned inside out; she had never felt so much agony, so much pain internalized.

"Push!" the doctor was yelling at her as she lay on the bed. "Push!"

"I can't!" she wailed.

"Yes you can," Charming whispered in her ear, stroking her hair. "Yes you can. You're going to give us a beautiful baby girl, honey. Just keep going a little longer."

And so she did, during another knotted contraction Snow focused on bringing her baby into the world. Again and again pain rippled through her body until it felt like an anchor had unspoiled with in her and she heard the cries of baby fill the air.

Snow leant back in the bed, panting yet laughing out loud. She'd done it.

The dwarf bundled the baby up in blankets and showed him to her. She saw the wide eyes – suspicious of this bright light and new world – and the red-purple of her skin. She held out her index finger and the baby curled its little hand round it.

"Do you have a name for her?"

Snow smiled, looking up at Prince Charming as her heart seemed to physically swell with love. "Emma," she whispered. "Her name's Emma."

And just as the dwarf moved to hand her her child she let out a cry of pain. She gasped, bolting upright as pain ripped through her abdomen.

"What is it?" asked Charming, his face slack with worry as he glanced between her and the doctor. "What's wrong?"

Snow shook her head, letting out another scream of pain.

The doctor's face was white as he settled back at the end of the bed. "There's another baby coming," he said, his voice shaking. And then he moved back into his precise professionalism. His voice turning soothing. "You're going to have to push again m'lady."

"What?" Snow said, fighting. Her voice was tight with panic and fresh tears. "What? No – no! It's not –"

"Push _now_! M'lady if you want this child!" shouted the doctor, firmly. And Snow wailed, grabbing James' hand as her mind went blank and she concentrated on bearing down to push.

The contraction finished, and she faltered, panting. "I don't understand," she was crying now. "How can there be another baby?"

"Sometimes the babies are just laying in such a position…" the dwarf at her side murmured, consolingly. "There could be no way of knowing…"

"The next contraction is coming soon," the doctor warned her and Snow shook her head again.

"But the wardrobe only takes one," she sobbed. "The wardrobe only takes one."

"_Push_!"

She screamed again, and this time the pain was stabbing through her heart as well as her body.

"No," she cried. "No, no, no, no."

"One more time, m'lady."

And Snow pushed and her second baby came into the world.

And she would never forget the depth of her grief as they handed her the other little child. A girl.

"Do you have a name for her?" asked the dwarf, tentatively.

_No, _thought Snow, as tears streamed down her face. She watched as baby stirred in one of her arms; Emma curled in the other. _I had a name for one child. Not two._

Charming stroked her cheek gently. "Let's name her after your cousin."

She let out a choked laugh that bubbled in her throat thanks to her crying. "What, Glinda? No!" She looked up at him, a thousand emotions warring in her. Fear, love, sorrow. "Let's call her Alice."

"Alice?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Alice." And then she bit her lip as her whole body shuddered with sobs. "Take…take Emma now," she said. "You have to go."

"Snow-"

"No, you need to. What Rumplestiltskin said about the curse – her being the savior. I'll stay here with Alice..."

His eyes watered slightly, but he took Emma gently from her arms. He looked at the baby for a second before placing a kiss on her forehead. "I love you," he murmured, and then he looked down at Alice and kissed her gently on the forehead too, "and I love you."

Alice squirmed slightly and Snow gave a watery smile. "She knows."

He nodded, gave one more, lingering look at Snow and then drew his sword and ran from the room.

She watched him go as long as she could and then Alice began to cry in her arms.

"Oh," she whispered, looking down at her. "My little baby. Shhh. Mommy's here. Mommy's here." She rocked Alice in her arms a little, but the comforting effect was marred by the fact that she was now crying again too. "Mommy's here," she kept choking out, tears streaming down her face. "Mommy's here."

* * *

Please **review **if you'd like to read more!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	2. Chapter 1

Story **Rated T **for swearing, mild sexual situations and situations of danger.

* * *

**ALICE**** SAVES WONDERLAND**

_'I did not direct my life._ I_ didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.' _- _**B.F Skinner**_

* * *

**CHAPTER 1**

* * *

When Alice stepped on the scales that morning, bleary-eyed and tired, Dinah slunk into the bathroom and sat herself on the digital readout above her toes.

"Nicely done," Alice complimented the cat, stepping off.

She showered quickly, slipping into a charcoal grey suit after and staring at her reflection critically in the full length mirror in her bedroom. Dinah sat behind her and she turned to the small, black cat. "What do you think?" she asked.

In the reflection of the mirror was a side-view of a young woman with white-blonde hair piled up into a complicated up-do; wearing well chosen, supple French knee-length boots and quiet pearl earrings. Old hags at the office whispered that she was trying too hard, but the truth was they were just stewing with jealousy that they no longer possessed the basic female skills to net men or wear a skirt that fell above the knee. The distinction between them and her left Alice ostracized to her own table at lunch-times, but that suited her just fine.

The cat tilted it's head and twitched it's left ear – which roughly translated to: 'why do you care? You're not going to be swept off your feet by the man of your dreams any time soon.'

"Shut up," Alice told Dinah. "What do you know? You're a cat."

Dinah blinked once, highlighting her muteness, and Alice rolled her eyes, turning back to the mirror to re-check her appearance. "You're talking to a cat, Alice," she muttered to herself, "you're going fucking _mad._"

Nobody - not even the cat - seemed to disagree. When you called yourself mad nobody ever disagreed with you. _  
_

She was already eating into her morning time-safety margin thanks to an extended shower – time for breakfast? Alice hurried into the kitchen and opened the fridge: one lemon, three beers, an onion - coffee it was, then.

On with the kettle.

She took her coffee light and sweet, and as she poured sugar into the mug, Alice was caught off guard by an unnerving thought. _Had her birth mother drunk her coffee light and sweet too? Did she have her blue eyes, her pale skin or her left-handedness? _

She gripped the work-top, as if she had physically been thrown off balance instead of mentally. Alice had not thought about her birth mother in a long time. She'd constructed fantasies about her as a kid, but not now, as a grown woman.

She had often thought about trying to find her, but something always held her back. Why look for the woman that had tossed her aside, right?

She took a deep, steadying breath to clear her mind and added the finished touches to her ritual morning routine of making coffee. Stirring in the sugar. Blowing on the surface of the mug and taking a long sip.

She turned; enveloping her hands round the mug and froze suddenly.

She blinked.

She blinked again.

There, in the middle of her kitchen – standing in front of the stainless steel fridge she'd invested in three weeks ago – was a white rabbit.

Absurdly (or maybe logically) her first thought was of Dinah. That maybe she might try and eat the rabbit.

Alice cast round quickly for the cat, but it wasn't in the room. When she turned back to the spot the rabbit had been in, she half expected it to be gone. It wasn't.

It stared at her for a long time. Alice stared back.

As she stared, other details began to process in her mind. Like the fact that the rabbit was wearing a waistcoat, or that now, it was actually _taking a pocket watch _out of the pocket of that very same waist coat. The rabbit examined the watch with a very human frown on its faced and then looked up at her.

"You're going to be late," it said. "You better hurry."

Alice dropped the mug, and it shattered on the ground.

The rabbit vanished.

"Oh God," she said, touching her forehead and staring at the spot the rabbit at had been only seconds before. "Oh _shit_. I _am _going mad."

Shaken, she swept up the pool of coffee and pieces of broken mug from the floor and dumped them in the trash. When she was finished with that she straightened and checked the clock that hung on the opposite wall.

"The stupid rabbit was right, though," she muttered to herself. "I _am _going to be late."

She hurried round the apartment – grabbed her keys, coat and phone.

Off with the coffee machine, off with the radio…off with his head.

Almost halfway out the door, Alice remembered to pour some food out into Dinah's bowl to last her the day.

That done, she locked up the apartment and ran out the building to her Beetle.

The journey to work was uneventful – though she had to drive slower than she usually would because she hadn't had the foresight to make sure that the car that she'd blown her last year's savings on was an all-wheel drive instead of front-wheel – which meant her little trojen didn't cope too well with the winter here.

As she drove past Granny's Bed and Breakfast, Alice noted with interest the bright yellow beetle parked outside it. "Haven't seen that around before," she murmured to herself and glanced back at the car again in her rear-view mirror. She was pretty sure she'd remember if she'd seen a car like that in Storybrooke.

Alice turned a corner and the yellow car disappeared from view. At the end of the street was a large building with a giant poster outside that read: _Robert Hawker: Attorneys. Because you deserve the best. _

She shook her head. She'd told Robert a million times to take that thing down. 'It looks tacky,' she'd always complain to him. As usual, he never listened to a damn thing she said.

Alice pulled into the parking lot beside the building and clambered out of her car, dragging her messenger bag over her shoulder as she did so.

She slammed the car door shut and turned –

- and felt her heart clench in her chest once again.

The white rabbit was right there across the street. It was watching her – stood up on its hind-legs like a human – and it was still holding that stupid pocket watch. It was tapping the watch and motioning for her to follow it.

_No_, Alice found herself mouthing, and shaking her head. _No_.

"Who are you talking to?"

She started, and looked to her left to see a confused looking, but beautiful dark haired woman. "Marian," greeted Alice, blinking at her work colleague.

She looked back across the street. Empty. Of course.

"I was –" she hesitated. "It's nothing."

Marian squinted up at her, then across the road – as if expecting to see something there. But there was only the front of Mo French's flower shop – a recently renamed Game of Thornes. _Witty_, Alice thought. "If you say so…" said Marian – and then she grinned. "Hey! I forgot. Happy birthday for yesterday!"

"Twenty eight," Alice groaned. "I can't believe another year's gone by and I've done _nothing _with my life."

"What did you do?"

"For my birthday? Nothing."

"Oh come on," Marian said, throwing her a look. "You've got to have done something? Did you go out with Ruby? Mary Margaret?"

"Nope. Woke up. Felt like shit. Spent the whole day at home contemplating that my inevitable death will be at home, being mauled to death by my many cats, and then went to bed – feeling like shit."

"That's called a hangover, Alice." Marian looked at her friend. "Seriously, your being miserable is effecting my fung shui. I should sue you."

Alice snorted. "Any judge would drop that case on its ass. Fung shui is to do with places."

Marian shrugged as they entered the building through the double sliding doors. The pair made their way past the reception desk and into an elevator that took them up to the second floor.

Alice used to think that law was a hallowed hall of justice. Becoming a lawyer proved to her that it was the complete opposite. She'd once represented a woman who had tried to sue the local grocery store owners Jack and Jill when the bag holding her grocery's had split and dropped the contents on her foot, fracturing it. She'd sued the grocery store, but they'd also sued the company that made the plastic bags and the woman had walked away several thousand dollars richer.

Despite Alice's amoral line of work, however, she enjoyed working with in the law system. It reminded her that the world was compromised of clear, logical and consistent rules, and somehow that was a comfort to her.

She'd made herself comfortable in her office and was doing a bit of internet browsing to kill some time when there was a sharp rap on her door at 11 AM. The door opened and Alice's boss, Robert, entered the room. He chucked some files onto her desk and she raised an eyebrow, picking them up and leafing through them.

"And this is…?"

"Henry Mills' adoption information."

Alice looked up at him. "As in the mayor's kid?"

"Yeah."

"What do you want me to do with this?"

Robert grinned. He was around forty, with thinning hair and brown eyes that still twinkling with mischief, despite his age. "You're going to love this – the biological mother's showed up in town. The mayor wants to know if she can enforce some kind of restraining order on her round the kid."

"And you dumped it on me?"

He winked and Alice sighed. "Just so you know – this whole case is completely unpalatable to me. Any kid should be able to meet their birth mother if they want to."

_Hell, what would I give to know who mine was?_

"That's not the point. If you were asked to defend a neo-Nazi, you'd do your job – even if you found their beliefs disgusting."

"Did you just compare Mayor Mills to a Nazi?"

He laughed, and said something that she didn't catch, because a reflection in her darkened computer monitor suddenly caught her eye. Right behind her left shoulder was the white rabbit.

Alice jerked round in her seat so quickly; she thought she'd get whip-lash.

"Whoa – Alice! You okay?" Robert asked, alarmed.

Alice glanced round behind her with a slightly crazed look in her eye. It had been _right there_. She'd seen it.

"Alice?" Robert pushed.

She turned to look at him, her thundering heart slowly returning to a normal pace. "I'm sorry. I just…thought I saw something."

He gave her a long look. "You don't actually have to take this on if you don't want to, I can give it to Marian –"

"No, seriously, it's fine," she said, trying to force herself to be calm.

"Okay then."

She waited until he'd closed the door and then she groaned loudly, getting up out of her chair and kicking her heels off – reaching over and opening the window to let some fresh air in.

Alice did not immediately go through Henry Mills files – instead, she searched through the mail in her in-tray for the days paper. She found it and flipped through it hurriedly until she got to the advertisements section and ran her finger down the page until she found the phone number she was looking for.

Alice dialed it, and paced up and down the room as the phone rang.

It went to answer phone after a few seconds and she stopped by the window, staring out onto the street.

"_Dr Hopper's office. I'm sorry, but I'm not in at the moment. If you require an appointment, please leave your name and number and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."_

There was a bleep, to mark the end of the doctor's recorded message and Alice opened her mouth to say…something.

She hesitated. What could she say?

_I'm sorry Doctor, but I'm seeing a white rabbit everywhere and I think I'm going mad? Said rabbit also has a pocket watch and is wearing a waistcoat…Did I also mention that it talks?_

It sounded ridiculous even in her head, and Alice ended the call by viciously pressing a button on her phone.

She rubbed the back of her neck absentmindedly as she thought about what to do. Her neck was itching – like someone was watching her - but she ignored the sensation determinedly. If she started getting paranoid about everything she _would _go insane.

Her eyes fell on Henry Mills adoption papers and she sighed. She'd decided to do her job.

She dialed a different number – this time using the company phone instead of her mobile – and this person _did _pick up.

"Hello?"

Alice sat back down at her desk, flicked on her computer monitor and wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear to free up her hands for typing.

"Hello, Mayor Mills? This is Alice Lidell from Robert Hawker Attorneys. Robert's given me your case and I think I can do something with it."

"Miss Liddell?" Regina Mills' voice came down the line. Even filtered by the static of a shitty phone connection, it still managed to sound like poisoned honey. "I'm so glad you've decided to help."

"Yeah well, it's my job," said Alice, uncomfortably. She'd never liked the mayor, and with the nature of what she wanted done, she felt even more uncomfortable. "Why don't you tell me everything about Henry's biological mother and I can see if what you want done is doable?"

"Of course," the mayor said. She began to talk, and Alice began to type. By the time Regina had finished speaking, she had a whole document of notes to go on.

"And she's never physically or mentally abused Henry whilst she's been in Storybrooke?" Alice clarified.

"No. But I know her type, Miss Liddell. I'm worried she'll be in Henry's life for all of three weeks and then decide to leave town again. I don't want him getting hurt, and I think her not seeing him is the best way to achieve that."

Alice chewed on her thumbnail. It would be a difficult case to fight from either angle. Whilst this woman _had _filed for a closed adoption, Henry had gone looking for her, which meant that he _wanted _her in his life. The jury tended to go in favor of what the kid wanted, so Regina was going to have to have some solid evidence that having the biological mother around definitely wasn't what was best for Henry.

"Okay, thank you Mayor."

"Oh, please, call me Regina."

_Which has to be the worst name ever, _Alice thought. "Sure. I'll phone you if anything comes up."

"Thank you."

"It's my pleasure."

She hung up and Alice stared at the phone for a little while.

Obviously, she wasn't going to be able to take the mayor's word for granted on the disposition of Henry's mother so she was going to have to talk to her herself – what was she called again, Emma Swann?

If she'd just come to town, Alice figured she'd be staying at Granny's, and she needed to get out of this tiny cubicle of an office anyway. It was claustrophobic, and she didn't want to have anymore delusional visions of white rabbits.

She grabbed her coat, slipped on her heels, and headed out.

* * *

**A/N **What do you think?

Please remember to **review**!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	3. Chapter 2

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 2**

* * *

Granny's Bed and Breakfast was an attractive-looking building at the center of town.

It was more of an inn for the residents of Storybrooke than travelers passing through (who seemed to be rare and far between), and was mainly used by husbands who had been kicked out by their wives, young kids who couldn't afford to pay an actual rent in town or a place to stay during house renovations.

As Alice drove down Haddon Avenue, into the heart of Storybrooke, she noticed the boutiques, the restaurants and the people walking down the street. People whom she could name - and probably name their entire families, their pets and their main hobbies, too.

For some reason, she started to feel like her stomach was dissolving. This place hadn't changed in the twenty eight years she'd been in it. At all.

Alice pulled up outside Granny's, sloppily mounting the curb and rushing out of the car. She doubted Graham would fine her for bad parking – it was amazing where association with Regina could get you in this town.

"Alice," Granny said in surprise from behind the front desk when she walked in. "What can I do for you?"

The reception area was all wood and homemade rugs and trinkets. The curtains were shut - which gave the room a slight feeling of suffocation. Alice straightened her grey suit – that did not quite fit with the homely atmosphere she stood in – and arranged a smile onto her face.

"It's sort of a strange request. I'm here on behalf of a client to see a Miss Emma Swan. Is she staying here?"

"Why, yes. I think she's up in room 10," Granny said, pleasantly. Alice thanked her, and was about to walk away when Granny stopped her. "Who did you say you were here for?"

Alice hesitated. "I didn't."

Granny's eyes narrowed. "Is this some business to do with Mr Gold?"

"No."

"The mayor?"

She didn't reply, and Granny observed her severely over her spectacles. "Alice, what's a girl like you doing getting caught up in the mayor's business?"

"It's my job, Granny."

Alice walked away and up the stairs. "Don't get in over your head, dear!" the old lady called up after her.

Alice thought about Henry Mills, and how she felt like was on the wrong side of the fence on this case. "I think I already am," she muttered to herself.

Room 10 wasn't hard to find. It was one of those rooms with a view of the town square that the inn so prided itself on having. Emma Swan opened the door on the third knock.

"Hi, I'm Alice Liddell," Alice said, smoothly, extending her hand for the woman to take. "I heard you were new in town and I figured you might want someone to show you around."

Whilst she spoke, all those old lawyer jokes her friends cracked when she was round, swam through her mind.

_How do you know if a lawyer's lying? Their lips are moving. _

Alice became dimly aware as she was talking, however, of the expression on Emma Swann's face. She looked completely and utterly shocked. Like she'd seen a ghost.

The moment Alice had shut up, she demanded, "how are you not seeing this?"

Alice looked at her, thrown. "Seeing what?"

Emma grabbed her and dragged her back into the room, positioning her so that they stood next to one another in front of the mirror that hung next to the chest of draws. "We look exactly the same."

Alice glanced between her and Emma's reflections. "Are you on _crack_?"

Emma's expression melted into one of confusion. "You…you don't see it?"

"That we…both have blonde hair?" Alice asked with her eyebrows raised. In her eyes, they looked nothing alike. "I'm sorry," she said, "maybe I should come back later."

"No - I'm sorry. It's been a crazy couple of days, I'm probably just…"

Emma tailed off, but despite her reassurances she continued to peer at Alice out of the corner of her eye as if _she _was the crazy one.

"It's okay. Do you want to go grab some coffee?"

Emma studied her for a long moment. "Why not?" she shrugged, grabbing a red leather jacket that had been lying on top of her bed and following Alice out the door.

Emma locked up the room, and they left the Bed and Breakfast in silence. Emma was obviously deep in thought about something, and Alice wasn't going to push her for the details she needed until she was sure that Emma trusted her.

"Can I ask you something?" the other blonde haired woman asked, eventually.

"Knock yourself out."

"Are you adopted?"

Alice blinked once, stopping in her tracks. "How did you guess?"

"A hunch," Emma said, dryly, as if Alice was missing some important piece of information. She walked on several paces before she realized Alice had stopped and turned around. "It's just…" Emma fidgeted with her hands, and then walked back over to the stand in front of the other, very skeptical looking, woman. "Here's the thing...even if you don't see it, we _do _look alike. I know this sounds crazy, but I think we could be related."

Alice cut her off, smiling ruefully. "Let me guess, you're adopted too?"

"A product of America's brilliant foster care system."

Something in Emma's face tightened as she said this. A look of defiance, as if she were stubbornly repressing any signs of pain or negative emotion associated with her words. But Alice could see it. The hurt lingering in her eyes.

She sighed, folding her arms. "Look, I'm sorry to say this, but I traced my real family a few years ago." Law was a backstage pass like no other. The moment Alice had found her adoption agency, it was easy to find all the loopholes in the system to gain access to names, addresses and medical information. "They gave me up when I was very young and the adoption was done through a private agency. If I'd had any siblings, not only would they have been likely to go through the same agency I did, my parents would have had to announce it in the documents – and there's no history of me having any family apart from them."

What Alice deliberately left out, however, was the thing that really hurt: the loss of another set of parents - her adopted parents - in a car crash seven years previously. Alice had only been twenty one, and had been taking Prozac for breakfast. She had her very own shrink, Dr Hopper. She winced to think of the money she had paid him to tell her what the matter was. When she'd admitted that she'd been adopted, his eyes had lit up. Hey, he'd done his PhD on adopted kids! But Alice had discovered the answer for herself in the end.

She looked at Emma's face and realized maybe this woman had been through the same crap she had.

"I'm sorry," she added.

"No, it's fine," Emma brushed off. "At least your family had the good grace to give you to an adoption agency. I was dumped on the side of the road."

Alice winced, but did not reply. What could you say to something like that?

She assured Emma into Granny's diner and they both slipped into opposite sides of a booth. Ruby brought them both glasses of water and then Emma ordered coffee and Alice, tea. When Emma was distracted, Ruby shot her a confused look from across the room and Alice shook her head infinitesimally.

"So," she said, smoothly, as Emma took a sip from her piping hot coffee. "What brought you to Storybrooke?"

_Let me guess, you're eleven old kid that you put up for a closed adoption after you gave birth to him in a prison cell in Phoenix, Arizona came and found you again after eleven years, dragging you back to Storybrooke where you managed to royally piss off the scariest mayor in the history of this town. _

"It's…complicated," Emma muttered.

"You planning on staying here for long?"

"Originally it was going to be a week – but things changed and now I'm not so sure."

"You mean you're going to stay longer than a week?"

"Maybe – and it's scaring the crap out of me."

Alice raised an eyebrow. "And why's that?"

"Because I've never stayed anywhere longer than a few months. Attachment isn't really my thing."

A red flag came up in Alice's head. So far, Emma was sounding the furthest thing from a mother in the world. If she was going to have any chance against Regina, she would have to swear – under oath – that her number one priority was Henry, that she loved him, and that she was never going to leave him.

_And that's if she sticks around long enough for Regina to file for this restraining order, _Alice thought.

She couldn't help the sudden twitch of her fingers. She wanted to straighten papers or type something on the computer. Normally, she conducted these kind of interviews in her office, not with out the client's knowledge over a cup of coffee.

Emma noticed. "You okay?"

"I'm a coffee addict," Alice lied. "It's withdrawal tremors."

"I don't think I could live with out coffee."

"The way I'm feeling, I'm beginning to think I can't either," Alice joked. She rested her elbows on the table, leaning forwards closer to Emma. "Okay, c'mon – who's the lucky guy?"

"Excuse me?"

"_Someone's _keeping you in Storybrooke, Emma."

Emma grimaced. "Am I that obvious?"

_No, _thought Alice. _I just know the answer to everything I'm asking you. I'm coaxing information out of you, Emma, little by little, and you don't even know it_. Emma was good at hiding her feelings. If Alice hadn't known Henry was involved, she would never have guessed.

"Like an open book," she returned, winking.

Emma opened her mouth to reply when the tea Alice had taken a gulp of suddenly turned tasteless in her mouth. The way they were both sat, Emma had her back to the door, but Alice had a full view of exactly who'd just entered the café.

"Ah, Miss Swan – I see you've met my lawyer."

Regina was stood directly behind Emma. She was peeling black leather gloves off of her hands as she spoke, and Emma turned to look at her quickly.

"Lawyer?" she asked, looking between the mayor and Alice, who'd slumped back into her seat, her teasing, friendly mask slipping as she glared up at Regina in anger.

Comprehension dawned on Emma's face, and suddenly her expression turned cold.

"Oh that's great. That's really great," She pushed herself away from the table, grabbing the coat she'd thrown over the back of her chair and storming towards the door. "Thank you for your generous tour of the town," she said sarcastically, turning to face Alice before she left the shop. "For what it's worth, you're an amazing actress."

The door slammed shut, and she was gone.

Regina spun round to face Alice, an amused expression on her face. "It seems I've underestimated you all these years, Miss Liddell. I'm taking that she didn't know you were working on my behalf?"

"No," bit out Alice. All eyes in the diner were on her, and she could feel the back of her neck burning. There was a sick feeling at the bottom of her stomach.

She grabbed her own coat and stood, throwing a twenty down on the table for Ruby.

"And just where do you think you're going?" Regina called out to her as she strode across the room.

Alice looked at the mayor, one hand on the door handle ready to open it. "To apologize," she said, her voice shaking. "This is between you and her. Not me."

"Oh honey," Regina said, her voice sickly sweet. "Don't pretend you're a good person stuck in a bad person's job. We all know that once an apple's rotten, it goes straight to the core."

Alice's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and then she ducked out the shop, not bothering to reply.

She glanced up and down the street, and spotted Emma's blonde hair and red leather jacket – she was making her way back towards the Bed and Breakfast.

"Hey," she yelled. "Wait!"

Emma turned, and when she saw who was calling out to her, her face – if possible – turned even harder.

"I should have known you were working forher," she snapped as Alice ran over. "I mean, hasn't she got everyone else in this town in her pocket?"

Alice ignored the insult, grabbing Emma's arm and looking her in the eye seriously. "What are you - ?"

"This conversation hasn't happened," Alice said, urgently. "Regina wants to put a restraining order on you to keep you away from Henry once and for all. The way I see it, if this goes to court, at the moment you're not going to win. My advice to you if you want to see your kid is to prove that you're a responsible adult and parent and that you're serious about being in Henry's life. You need to get a permanent address – even if it's just staying in someone else's house. I've got a friend –" Alice fished around in her messenger bag and pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper, she scribbled down a few words, handing it to Emma. "- Mary Margaret – that's her address and phone number. She's advertising for a flat mate. If you're planning on sticking round in Storybrooke as well, you should get a job. Keep a note on how much money you're spending on rent, how much money you have spare each month – stuff like that, that you can present to a jury. If you can do that, and if it's clear Henry wants you in his life, I think you've got a shot at winning."

Emma looked at the piece of paper Alice had thrust into her hand for a second, and then stared up into her face. "Why?" she asked, simply.

"Because I know that if I ever found my birth mother, I wouldn't let her go again in a hurry."

"You really think she could take this to court?"

"I wouldn't put it past her."

Emma nodded absentmindedly, turning the piece of paper in her hands. It was quiet for a few seconds and Alice clenched and unclenched her hands a few times. "I'm sorry," she said eventually.

"I would say 'it's okay', but it's not," Emma said. She glanced at the expression on Alice's face, and her own expression softened slightly. "You lied to me pretty expertly back there."

Alice held up her hands. "I had to find out what I could about you."

"I get it. You were doing your job. I can relate." She noted the skeptical look on Alice's face. "I can, believe me. I was a bail bondsman."

Alice nodded, and then chewed on her lip, looking wary. "…Listen, I know this is a lot to ask, but if I could talk to Henry – find out what he wants out of this mess – I might be able to kill the case before it can reach court."

Emma's eyes narrowed. "I thought lawyers were bunked off cases if it was proved that they had any level of personal investment in what they were doing?"

"If you hadn't noticed, I'm pretty good at lying," Alice reassured her, dryly.

She wouldn't deny, though, that something with in her was burning to help Henry re-unite with Emma. To do this one thing _right_, when all it seemed she did as a lawyer was benefit dishonest people.

"I can bring him round to your house this evening," Emma said eventually.

"Apartment," corrected Alice. She scribbled down the address on the paper she'd given her next to Mary Margaret's. "Five o clock."

"Five o clock," repeated Emma. Alice nodded in confirmation and Emma shot her one last, suspicious look and walked away.

* * *

**A/N **This _will _be a Jefferson/Alice fic and he will appear in the next few chapters, but not quite yet.

It would be great to get some reviews for this chapter, as I didn't receive any for the last one I posted and it's a bit of a killer for motivation when writing.

Thanks for reading!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	4. Chapter 3

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 3**

* * *

Emma double and triple checked the address on the piece of paper Alice had given her and then looked up at the building she and Henry were parked outside of.

It was exactly the type of place you'd expect a young, high-flying lawyer working for the mayor to live in. The building was tall, state-of-the-art and its southern face overlooked the harbor of Storybrooke. The setting sun made the water glitter and the glass fencing of balconies glow golden, making the building seem all the more impressive.

"Whoa," said Henry, leaning across Emma to peek out of the car window and up at the group of apartments.

"You got that right," muttered Emma. She glanced at Henry, and noticed the large, hardback story-book he had tucked safely under his arm. "Seriously? You had to bring that thing with you?"

"I'm trying to figure out who she is," he protested. "I can't find her story in here."

"Maybe because she isn't a fairytale character, Henry."

The young boy shook his head adamantly. "Everyone in this town's in here, Emma. _Everyone_ – except her."

She rolled her eyes, deciding to indulge him for once. "Okay. Her name's Alice – maybe she's Alice in Wonderland."

"I thought of that, but the Mad Hatter's in here. So if he is, why wouldn't she be?"

Henry seemed genuinely perplexed about Alice's lack of appearance in his book and Emma sighed. She hadn't meant to give the kid another false-mystery for him to try and figure out; it was enough that he was obsessed with the curse as it was.

"C'mon," she said, unbuckling her seat belt and getting out of the car.

This side of Storybrooke did not have the homey small-town vibe that Emma had come to expect from this town, instead, it looked like the classier end of a big city. Littered along the road, proud and assuming were polished silver BMW's and Jag's that made her yellow Volkswagen stand out painfully. When she and Henry entered the ground floor of the building of apartment's that Alice stayed in, the electric doors slid open with a smooth hum and she almost walked into Dr Whale who was just leaving.

_Figures, _thought Emma, _that he'd live in a place like this. _

Alice's apartment was on the top floor. When she opened the door for them to come in, Emma discovered it to be a four-thousand-square-foot loft area.

Entering for the first time, she was struck by not only the bareness to it, but the sense it conveyed of attaching great value to design and neatness. Each piece of furniture seemed perfectly situated, the floor was cement and some pipes were left artfully uncovered on the walls among precise pieces of abstract art-work. It was open-plan, combining the kitchen and living room and a door on the left presumably led off to the bedroom whilst a large sliding door to the right led out to a balcony that overlooked the harbor.

The apartment was many things - grey, minimalist - but imaginative and adventurous – all the things that Alice in Wonderland stood for, it was not. Henry's theory seemed to be blown out of the park.

"Wow," said Emma, blinking as she looked around her, forgetting her manners.

Alice stood in the center of the room rolling up the sleeves of her shirt. She was slightly taller than Emma, she observed, and of a different build – slighter, less curvy. There were freckles across her nose and she couldn't decide if her mouth was slightly too large for her face or not. "Yeah," Alice said, smiling uncomfortably. "My adopted parents died a few years back, and my job coupled with the inheritance meant that I suddenly had more money than I knew what to do with." She glanced between Emma and Henry. "Make yourself at home," she encouraged, gesturing to the sofa's clustered round a coffee table to one corner of the room.

Emma sat down awkwardly with Henry next to her. Unlike her, he didn't seem to find the apartment unsettling in its bareness – in fact he was staring around him in a state of awe. "Look at her TV!" he whispered to Emma. "It's huge."

She smiled slightly at that.

Alice settled herself down on a sofa opposite them and once again Emma was struck by how similar they looked. It was odd, like staring into a mirror instead of at a different person. Sure, Alice's face was a bit thinner than hers, her lips slightly fuller, but there was no denying that they were related. Henry noticed it too. Out of Emma's peripheral vision she saw him glancing rapidly back and forth between herself and Alice.

Good, so someone else noticed it too. It wasn't just her going crazy.

"Is there anything I can get you two?" Alice asked. "Tea? Hot chocolate?"

"We're good…thanks," said Emma.

She nodded and reached for some file's that were on top of a cabinet next to her chair. "Okay," she said, setting everything down on the coffee table in front of her. "I really need to emphasize that you guy's aren't supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to…"

"I understand," reassured Emma, and Alice seemed to visibly relax.

"Great. I'm pretty sure I'm right in guessing that everyone involved in this case just want what's best for Henry." She must have noticed the look on Emma's face because she sighed and rolled her eyes. "…In their own way. Assuming you want to stay, Emma -"

"You can't leave again!" Henry suddenly burst out, turned to face her. "I only just found you!"

Emma felt her stomach clench uncomfortably.

As a kid, she used to imagine that she saw her birth mother everywhere and just didn't know it. She'd imagine that it was the woman who gave her ticket for the movies, her school teacher; the librarian. She'd heard the phrase 'it's a small world' and figured that meant that at any moment in her life, her biological mother would just pop up out of nowhere.

Emma could relate to Henry in so many ways. But not on this. Henry had _found _his birth mother. Her.

After giving him up all those years ago, was she really ready to be part of his life again? Was it fair that she got to make that decision when she had abandoned him in the first place?

"I'm not going anywhere," Emma found herself saying, determinedly.

She was aware of Alice's piercing blue eyes on her face for a moment but deliberately held Henry's gaze – trying to convey how much she really meant what she'd said.

"I guess that settles it, then" Alice murmured, she made a note of something down on the file and then looked up at Emma and Henry. "This shouldn't have to go to court, you know" she said. "I'm sure it's the type of thing you can all settle in private."

"Have you ever tried to persuade Regina to do something before?" asked Emma, sarcastically.

Alice's lips twitched slightly. "Okay," she conceded. "But at least try because the amount of paper I have to go through for this trail is a bitch." Her eyes flickered to Henry, who was smirking. "Sorry," she added.

"It's alright," he said, and then he looked down at the storybook he was still holding on to. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"If you were a fairytale character, who do you think you'd be?"

"_Oookayyyy_," said Emma, slapping her knees loudly and standing. "Time to get you home, kid."

"But –"

"No arguing. Your mom's going to be wondering where you are," Emma cut in. She looked at Alice, who was still staring at Henry. Her face seemed to have frozen and something in her eyes had shuttered. "Er, thanks for everything," she said.

Alice blinked once, as if she were being released from some kind of spell and looked up at Emma and smiled – albeit, not a particularly convincing one.

Emma assured Henry to the door, and Alice stood to see them out.

"I do really appreciate this," Emma said in an undertone in the doorway of Alice's apartment. Henry had gone to press the button for the elevator. "I know that it's not exactly _legal_…"

"It was my pleasure," Alice deflected, shaking her head. She hovered, obviously waiting for Emma to leave, but something kept Emma rooted to the spot.

"Listen," she said. "I normally pride myself on being able to read people pretty well, and I can tell something's not right with you."

Alice frowned, opening her mouth to snap something back at Emma, but she hurried on, "I don't mean, like, you're secretly back-stabbing us. I mean, you seem as if something's eating at you. Like you've got something on you're mind."

"I'll be fine," Alice said, and Emma noticed that she didn't deny Emma's observation. "Goodnight Emma," she hinted.

"Oh. Yeah, sorry." Emma found herself looking away awkwardly. She wasn't used to sticking her neck out for someone – helping them. She debated pushing the subject of the fact that they might be related, but decided against it. Alice obviously didn't believe that theory. "If you need to find me, I was thinking about taking your advice and moving in with Mary Margaret."

She smiled. "That's great."

"EMMA C'MOOONNNN!" Henry yelled from down the corridor.

She tucked her hands into her back pockets. "I'll see you round."

"You too," nodded Alice, and shut the door.

* * *

The moment Emma and Henry left, Alice let out a sigh.

_If you were a fairytale character, who would you be? _Henry had asked.

The obvious answer had struck a little too close to home for comfort. Alice in Wonderland.

It had only reminded her of the appearance of the white rabbit, and brought everything that had happened today back to her.

_It's stress, _Alice told herself. _You're stressed. _

She looked around the apartment. She had expected Emma and Henry's reactions. Everyone reacted like that – that kind of slack-jawed awe. To her, this apartment was a product of all her hard work, a way of showing it off. She loved it, and she wasn't going to lie, she also loved the thrill of making the big money to get a place like this. Yet something in the pity on Emma's face when she'd seen it made Alice reassess her surroundings. Did Emma think it was overindulgent? Lonely, to live up here with no one else?

Alice tried to imagine what it would be like for the son you'd given up to suddenly come back to you. To rediscover family that you thought you'd never have again.

There was suddenly an unpleasant tug on her heart that she tried to ignore.

Something rubbed up against her leg, and she looked down to see Dinah brushing up against her, as if to prove her wrong. She wanted feeding, Alice decided, and changed the cat's food and water and then set about tidying up Henry's files.

As an after-thought, she decided to call Mary Margaret.

"Hey," the young school-teacher's pleasant voice came down the line. "What's going on Alice? There are people who were in the diner today that told me–"

"Yeah, Regina hooked me in to help her file for a restraining order against Emma Swan," cut in Alice. "Listen can you do me a favor? She needs a place to stay for a few weeks, and I sent her in your direction."

"Who, _Regina_?"

"No – _Emma _you idiot."

"Alice, I thought you were on the mayor's side on this case?"

"Technically," Alice conceded, wrapping the phone chord round her fingers absentmindedly.

"The fundamentals never did apply to you."

Alice grinned, and then felt her smile slide into a grimace. "So I'm the talk of the town, huh?"

"Yup – Sidney'll probably have it as front page news tomorrow."

"I seriously hope not, or else I'm suing his ass."

"That's what you get."

"Hey, my job practically _requires _the amoral approach. We can't all be Saint Charity."

"You know I hate it when you call me that."

"I do. How were the kids today?"

'The kids' referred to Mary Margaret's school pupils. Alice heard her groan on her end of the line. "The kids are fine, but I think I gave Victor Whale the impression that I wanted fifteen children on our date."

"I bet that sent him running for the hills."

"Actually, he didn't hear me – he was too busy checking out Ruby."

"What happened to honor, charm and nobility in men?"

"I miss the good old days when they had to fight to get past dragons to be with their one true love. I think the problem today is that it's just too easy for them."

Alice laughed. After another ten minutes, she bade Mary Margaret good night and hung up the phone. She had takeout Chinese for dinner and Dinah settled on her lap whilst she watched a few repeats of old TV shows before bed.

She was aware of the utter quiet of the apartment as she settled under the covers, and the last thought that crossed her mind before she fell asleep was of Henry, and that storybook he constantly clutched to him wherever he went.

* * *

Alice woke abruptly half way through the night.

Just like before she had gone to bed the apartment was incredibly quiet. All she could hear was the house's pulse – that was actually probably the hum of the refrigerator – that dull _waa waa waa_ that sounded over and over again. It wasn't completely dark. The room was a sort of grayish color due to the road-side lights on the street – and Alice could make out the black, hazy forms of her wardrobe and bed-side table.

She was dimly aware of Dinah going crazy in the kitchen; hissing and spitting and Alice could hear her paws scrabbling against he bedroom door. She lifted her head off the pillow; ready to get up and shoo the cat away, when something in her peripheral vision attracted her attention.

It was stark and red against the white of the wall opposite her bed. For a second, Alice was struck mute, and then she felt her heart rate increase to an almost painful level and she opened her mouth and screamed.

It was still fresh and dripping down the wall – the words painted there like some kind of permanent tattoo.

* * *

_YOU'RE LATE_

* * *

**A/N **I will admit that this story is going to explore some darker themes – particularly in Wonderland, as I've always thought there was a slightly nightmarish quality to the book. I loved that the episode Hat Trick in Season 1 delved into places Once Upon A Time didn't usually go to and _was _that bit darker, which is something I want to incorporate into this fic.

Thank you to everyone that reviewed last chapter – I really appreciate your comments.

(Oh, and to **BelleChic**, I'm not entirely sure what you were asking in you review, but this story will depict the development of a romantic relationship between Alice and the Mad Hatter/Jefferson. I hope that answers your question?)

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	5. Chapter 4

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 4**

* * *

There was the sound of someone yelling outside Alice's apartment door, banging; and finally the sound of splintering wood and a crack as the door was forced open and the lock broke.

Dr Whale was suddenly standing in Alice's bedroom, and though it must have taken him minutes to respond to her cries, it felt like only moments.

He looked grimly between her and then the writing on the wall and picked her up by her armpits like you would with a child, carrying her bridal-style into the kitchen.

"Did you see anyone in the apartment? Anyone at all?" he was asking, grabbing onto her shoulders to make her focus. But Alice's brain was so panic-stricken that she was only aware of things happening in pieces, and for a second she could only wonder how she'd suddenly come to be sat down on the floor of her kitchen with her cheek pressed up against the cool glass face of her oven.

"I don't know –" she said. Her face were wet. She was crying. "I just woke up, and – and –"

He stood up from his crouched position in front of her, that same, tight expression still on his face. She watched as he located the switch for the lights, and as they flickered on he scouted round the apartment - testing the balcony door, looking in the utility cupboard. Eventually, he phoned the Sheriff.

"Listen, I know it's late, but there's been a break in at Apartment 10 at the Sea-View apartment block…no, no it's not me – it's Alice Liddell…yeah…there are some slightly…worrying aspects," (here, he turned his back on Alice, muttering something into the phone that she couldn't hear) "…no, I didn't see anyone else, I've checked the whole apartment…okay, thanks Graham."

Viktor Whale's voice was business-like and calm as he spoke, and despite his reputation for being a womanizer with in town, Alice suddenly felt a rush of gratefulness for the professional attitude with which he dealt with the situation.

As she observed him, she noted that he'd obviously run up to her apartment in a hurry. He'd thrown a blue work shirt on over the grey sweatpants that he obviously slept in and the harsh glare of the kitchen lights were unforgiving on his face, high lighting the tired dark circles underneath his eyes.

Looking at him made Alice suddenly realize that she'd fallen asleep with makeup still on and when she rubbed underneath her eyes, her hand came away blackened with smeared mascara and eye-liner. She cursed internally – she probably looked like a nightmare – but didn't move to do anything about it. Instead she stood on wobbly legs and made her way back towards her bedroom.

She pushed against the door hesitantly and it swung open to reveal the still night-dark room. Light from the kitchen flooded in, illuminating part of the wall to her right where the words had been painted. She walked up and touched the tip of the _Y _in _YOU'RE_, withdrawing her hand and rubbing her fingers together. She felt the slick viscosity of it between her fingertips.

"It's still fresh," she said, turning to face Dr Whale who stood in the doorway. "That means it's been done recently, right?"

He didn't reply immediately, just crossed his arms and regarded her with an unreadable expression on his face. "Why don't we go and make you some coffee before the Sheriff gets here?" he asked, finally.

Alice nodded, grabbing her robe and wrapping it around her before following him out to the kitchen.

They sat with their hot drinks at the bar of the open plan kitchen opposite one another; Dr Whale in a kind of preoccupied silence, and Alice in a shell-shocked haze.

_YOU'RE LATE. _The words ran through her mind over and over. For the first time in her life, logic failed Alice entirely. She didn't want to think what it could represent, what it was telling her, she just wanted to ignore it.

Yet the whole point of the message was obviously that it would be something that Alice _could not_ overlook. If she chose not to heed this, then to what lengths would whoever this was go to to get her to pay attention?

And what was she late _for_?

"Was there anything out of the ordinary that you noticed before you came home?" Dr Whale suddenly asked, breaking the silence.

She glanced up at him, seeing the strangely intense look on his face. "No," she said, for some reason slightly defensive. "I haven't seen anyone acting weirdly at all."

That did not seem to be the answer Whale was hoping for. He frowned, looking down at his mug, and it struck Alice after a few moments that he was avoiding her gaze. "How strange," he muttered, but it was in a slightly sardonic way that made her think that his question hadn't entirely been what she thought it was.

She watched him for a long moment, trying to understand what could possibly be gong through his head. "Isn't it, though," she replied, carefully.

For some reason she felt as if she wanted to cross-examine Viktor Whale - which was ludicrous because for one, they were not in court, and for another, he had not been called forth by an opponent.

That she knew of.

Alice knew plainly that Dr Whale was in Regina's pocket just as much as she was. Maybe…if he had reported to Regina that he'd seen Emma and Henry come out of her apartment last night, she might want revenge…

But no.

Even if Regina _had _arranged this, the writing on the wall fit in too well with her vision's of the White Rabbit, meaning that Regina would have to be both a mind-reader and able to get through double-padlocked doors with out leaving a trace of her presence to do this.

Still, her suspicions continued to grow, and Dr Whale must have sensed the silence between them gradually become awkward, because he looked up at her with an uncomfortable smile. "I'm sorry about your door by the way," he said. "I'll pay for the locks to be repaired if you want."

"It's okay - you probably thought I was being murdered or something."

"How do you feel?"

"A little shaken," she replied truthfully. She ran her finger over the lip of her mug absentmindedly. "It was good of you to come for me."

A private smirk danced across his face for a moment. "You say that like you didn't expect me to." The smirk faded however, and suddenly his expression turned distant as he surveyed the lavish furnishings around them. "Ironic, isn't it, that the creatures of the underworld seem to be at the top of the social hierarchy here."

Alice swallowed, the finger that had been moving round the rim of her cup suddenly freezing. Somehow Whale sounded different - his tone, his mannerisms - had utterly changed for one, brief, fleeting second. "This town doesn't seem to favor the good," she allowed, trying to ignore the fact that he obviously perceived her as being lumped in with the likes of the Sheriff, the mayor and Mr Gold.

There was a knock on the door (for what good it did, as it was still ajar from when Dr Whale had forced it open) and Graham appeared.

"Have you checked that the house is secure?" he asked immediately, not bothering with introductions. He seemed to be talking more to Whale than to Alice.

"Every window and every door," Whale confirmed standing.

"You mentioned graffiti of some kind."

Alice stood too. "It's a message," she corrected. "And it's through there," she said, pointing towards her bedroom

Graham's eyes turned to her. Though they were a soft brown color, they somehow managed to be piercing. He moved away from the door revealing a previously unknown presence from behind him.

"Dr Hopper," Alice said in surprise.

"Alice," the ginger haired man greeted. He was holding his traditional black bowler hat in his hands, and he was fidgeting with it nervously.

"W-what are you doing here?"

Whale rubbed the back of his neck, looking between Alice and the psychiatrist. "I should probably head back to bed –"

"No," said Hopper, more nervous now than ever. He seemed to be having a hard time meeting Alice's gaze. "I need to ask you a few questions too."

"Too?" she echoed. "Shouldn't Graham be the one asking questions?"

She glanced through into her bedroom to see the Sheriff examining the painted writing on her wall and photographing it.

She looked back at Dr Hopper, and felt herself starting to get slightly on edge - her voice rising and becoming louder than she'd intended for it to be. "Look, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Please, Alice, if you could just sit down," said Dr Hopper, his voice almost pleading. She did so, tugging her white robe round her more tightly.

Satisfied, Hopper turned to Dr Whale. "Viktor, how did you find Alice when you got into the apartment?"

"She was lying in bed," he said, obviously reluctant. "She was upset."

"She'd just woken up?"

"It seemed that way, yes."

"How did you get in to the apartment?"

"I had to kick the door open."

"It was locked?"

"Yes."

Hopper had taken out a notepad and pencil and was beginning to jot notes down onto the paper.

"And you searched the apartment after you saw Alice?"

"Yes."

"And everything was secure?"

Graham exited her room and lent against a wall a little away from Whale and Alice. His distance and his lack of participation in the investigation was causing anger bubble up inside of her. "Isn't this _your _job," she snapped at him.

"No, this is very, very much Dr Hopper's job," he said with conviction, crossing his arms. He glanced at the psychiatrist and cleared his throat. "From what we can tell, Alice, your apartment has been completely secure all night. Which means that –"

Comprehension dawned on her with a sickening lurch. "You think that I did this, don't you?"

"Not intentionally," Graham said. "But –"

"You think _I _did this?!" she repeated, loudly – bewildered, astonished.

"I found a can of opened red paint in the utility closet when I was searching your apartment, Alice," murmured Dr Whale, quietly.

She shook her head, staring at all three men, unbelieving. "You think I would _vandalize my own wall_?!"

"It's most likely that you were sleep walking," offered Dr Hopper, pushing his round glasses further up his nose. "The message could be some kind of externalization of internal fears."

"By writing _'you're late'_?!" she hissed, balling her hands up into fists. "What would that even _mean_?!"

He looked uncomfortable. "Maybe this should be discussed in private –"

"No," she snapped viciously. "No. I would love to hear your theories on my mental state."

Hopper pushed his glasses up his nose again. "Well – well," he stuttered. "It could signify a number of things – like – like - you may feel like time is running out with your life, that you feel that you may have wasted it. It could also symbolize circumstances in your life that you feel are unresolved and that you have missed and have no chance of re-visiting –"

Alice felt the color drain from her face as all the anger left her body. Everything that Dr Hopper was saying was making too much sense, and yet she continued to cling to the notion that the message _had _to have been from the white rabbit. _A white rabbit? _Her mind scoffed, _are you sure that's not another delusion, Alice? Imagining that there's a path to another world so that you don't have to face that you're totally alone in this one? Open your eyes, Alice. It's only logical that - _"But I'm not crazy," she whispered, her lips barely moving as she cut off her interior monologue. "I'm not."

Hopper's words continued to rush over her relentlessly like an in coming tide at sea. "I'm not saying your crazy, but this is definitely something you need to talk about and there are obviously problems that you have that your going to have to face –"

"This can all be discussed in the morning," Graham cut in, tiredly. He looked at Alice. "Is there any place you can stay for the night whilst we phone for someone to paint over that writing?"

"Oh, she can stay with me."

Three pairs of eyes turned towards Alice's door to where Regina was suddenly standing.

"Why are you –" Dr Hopper started, frowning.

"Graham phoned for me," Regina said smoothly, stepping more fully into the apartment. "I'm Alice's emergency contact, aren't I dear?"

Alice had not looked up upon hearing Regina's voice for the first time, and as she did so now, the older woman could see the haunted quality to her eyes. "Yes," Alice murmured, tonelessly. "You are."

Regina smiled in satisfaction. "Do you mind if I have a look at that message?" she asked Graham.

He shook his head, gesturing for her to pass through into Alice's bedroom.

When she came back out again, Alice was pulled out of her stupor by the expression on Regina's face. It was not pitying or confused as the three men's had been, it was something else. Something that Alice couldn't quite place. Realization? Comprehension?

"Come on, dear. You're probably exhausted by now," Regina said to Alice, schooling her features into something more platonic. "I'm more than happy for you to stay with me and Henry for the night."

Alice lifted an eyebrow, but did not contest her. She was, as she had told Mary Margaret after all, 'technically' on her side.

"I hope you aren't up too late solving this" Regina smiled at Graham as Alice pulled on shoes and a coat over her pajamas – not bothering to change clothes. The three men bid their goodbyes, and Regina assured Alice out of the apartment as if she were younger than her twenty eight years.

The moment the pair were in the elevator, descending to the bottom floor, Regina sighed. "I am afraid, Miss Liddell, that the problem you now pose to me is something I can't ignore for much longer."

Alice glanced at her. In the mind she was in, all she could do was notice that even at 3 AM in the morning the mayor did not have a hair out of place. "Excuse me?" she asked, not quite sure that she'd heard her right.

Regina did not look at her, instead staring straight ahead as the elevator whirred around them both. "You've always been useful to have around, but unfortunately you're more of a threat now than a necessity. I told myself for a long time that it didn't matter that the curse didn't seem to have as stronger grip on you as everyone else; that it didn't matter you were the only one ageing in this town. But I suppose if other worlds are now taking note of you, so should I."

Alice's head was spinning. The elevator doors slid open with a metallic groan and Regina stepped out with Alice following a little behind. "I don't understand what you're talking about," she said as they exited the bottom floor and stepped out onto the sidewalk and the cool night air. "Everybody's under a curse? What curse?"

Regina stopped in her tracks, shooting her a tight-lipped smile. "It all worked out quite neatly, actually, I must say. For you, your curse is that you will never be what you have the potential to be. Which means you will never be able to fulfill the prophecy. You will always be someone less, striving to be something more - which is probably why whoever wrote that message on the wall for you is going to end up being so disappointed."

"Hang on; are you saying that I'm not going crazy?" Alice asked desperately, stopping and grabbing hold of Regina's arm before she could carry on any further.

As the halted, Alice suddenly noticed a man up ahead standing at the corner of the street. He was situated so that he was in the shadows that road-side lamps didn't reach, and it seemed as if he was waiting for them.

The mayor glanced over her shoulder to where Alice was looking. "Ah, I see you've spotted Eduardo." The man was starting to approach them, and as he walked through a patch of light, Alice saw that he had long, shoulder-length straggly hair and a thin face. "Don't be alarmed Miss Liddell, though I will grant you that he does look very grim. By your expression I can tell that you have detected something isn't right." Regina's smile grew wider as Alice attempted to take a step-backwards, but the mayor's hand tightened round the sleeve of her coat. "It's probably a small comfort for you to know now that, no, you're not going insane. But it _was_ very convenient that Dr Hopper thought you were," Regina smirked. "I'm sure you'll see the irony of all this in time, Miss Liddell."

"The irony of _what_?" Alice asked very sharply as she gave another tug to try and free herself from Regina's grip.

But the mayor didn't reply. The man was standing right next to her, looking at her expectantly as if awaiting instruction, but all she said was simply, "you know what to do."

Alice let out a yell that was quickly muffled by the rag that the man placed over her nose and mouth.

She cried out, jerking as she tried to get away, inhaling chemicals that caused her eyes to role into the back of her head and her body to go limp.

She felt the world tip to the side, and then felt herself hit the cold and unforgiving cement slabs of the sidewalk. All her senses shut down, and she was aware of no more.

* * *

**A/N **Jefferson next chapter! Woop woop!

Please review with your thoughts, and thank you to everyone that reviewed last chapter.

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	6. Chapter 5

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 5**

* * *

Alice rolled onto her side and vomited.

Her head felt like it was about to burst open and as she coughed her way back into consciousness the room around her came into dizzying focus.

"Where am I?" she rasped.

Her only answer was a persistent ringing in her ears.

"Is this some little sick joke of God?" she continued, aloud, though there was no one to hear her. "Haven't you done enough to me already?" The room was now spinning. A vortex of vertiginous white walls. It was hard to focus on one thing. Alice felt herself being dragged back into unconsciousness. "Where a -"

* * *

"Can I have an espresso and two croissants to go please?"

The girl who had been arguing with Granny when Emma booked a room at the Bed and Breakfast tore her eyes off of the Sheriff for a moment and looked at Emma. "Sure," she said, unwillingly. She shot one last, lingering glance at Graham and turned to fix up Emma's coffee.

"Thanks," Emma muttered.

"Going somewhere?"

Emma leant against the counter for a few seconds, stealing herself, and then turned to face the Sheriff. "Actually, yeah," she said, plastering a smile on her face. "I'm going to see my son." Go and tell _that _to Regina.

She thought she saw something behind his eyes flicker, but he didn't comment. Instead she was surprised to see him extend his hand. "I don't think we've been properly introduced," he said, his voice holding a strong Irish accent. "I'm Graham."

"Emma," she said, warily; taking his hand. He had a good handshake, which pissed her off. People like Graham, who lived in the mayor's pocket, did not have good handshakes. "Not at work?"

"Working now, actually," he said. "I'm following up on a missing persons report."

"Missing person?" asked Emma, frowning. Something in the tone of his voice, something in his stance alerted her to the fact that he might not be telling her the whole story.

"Yeah, you know Alice Liddell?" said Ruby, dusting her hands over the front of her apron that concealed tiny little red shorts. She set a steaming cup of coffee down on the counter in front of Emma next to a paper bag with two croissants inside. "Apparently she didn't show up for work this morning. She's just…disappeared."

…..

"_I know that it's not exactly legal…"_

…_._

"_Are you okay? You seem like something's eating at you. Like you've got something on your mind."_

"_I'll be fine." _

….

Inside Emma, everything stopped. She stared at Ruby for a second, disbelieving. If Alice was missing…then there was only one person who would have wanted her gone.

"I gotta go," she said quickly, scooping up her coffee and croissants and hurrying out of the diner.

She knew she should have cut more than one branch off of that damn apple tree.

* * *

Alice had long since given up on trying to free herself.

Isolation had sharply amplified tiny sensations that she would not have otherwise noticed. She was hyper aware of the lumpy mattress she lay on, for one, and the sound of a fly buzzing round the light bulb overhead.

She was awake, but her eyes were closed. If she had opened them, she would only have been confronted by four white walls encasing a square cell of roughly fifteen feet by fifteen feet.

She was waiting, patiently - desperately - for the sound of footsteps.

She tried to calculate how long she had been in the cell, but it was impossible. She'd regained consciousness again maybe hours ago, but who was to say how long she'd lain here, dead to the world for all intents and purposes, before that?

Alice's eyes flickered open abruptly and she leapt out of bed, bolting towards the door. Her hands wrapped round the bars that secured the only window into her cell and her grip tightened as she heard the faint sound again. Voices.

"Hello?" she yelled. The sound of talking stopped, but the sound of people approaching did not falter. "_Hello_!"

A woman appeared in her vision. Nothing like Alice would have expected.

She had thought to see maybe Regina, a burly looking bodyguard, or an equally threatening and intimidating stranger.

What she actually saw was much, much more terrifying.

The woman smiled at her kindly on the other side of the door. She was dressed in a crisp, white uniform and held a tray in her hands. "Miss Liddell if you could please step back from the door and hold your hands in the air whilst I bring in your food and a change of clothes–"

"_Where am I_?" Alice snapped ignoring her.

"The hospital, Miss Liddell," said the woman, with all the patience and patronization with which you'd use to address an Alzheimer's patient. "Now please –"

"- This isn't the hospital. I've _been _in the hospital!"

The woman frowned, glancing off to her left and speaking in a low voice to someone Alice couldn't see. "You're therapy sessions will begin when you've had a few days to acclimatize," she said, turning back to face Alice. "You can talk this all over with Dr –"

"_Therapy _sessions? I've been _kidnapped _for _fucks sake_!" Alice yelled – her anger overflowing. She was yelling now, shaking the bars. "Let me out of here!"

"Miss Liddell –"

"_Don't even. _Unlock this door _right now_!"

"Please calm down –"

"RIGHT NOW!"

The woman turned to her left again, there was another conversation held in hushed, hurried voices. "Why do you think you're here, Alice?"

Her hands tightened round the bars so hard that her knuckles turned white. "Because Regina put me here."

"But _why _do you think you're here?"

She paused. _That _part was fuzzy. She could barely remember what the mayor had said that night, it had all sounded so absurd, so mad – how could she possibly tell this woman what Regina had said about the curse? About other worlds?. "She said I was a threat," Alice chose, finally. She looked at the woman who seemed to be hesitating. "Are you going to let me out of here or not?!"

"Alice you're right. You're here because Miss Mills sent you here. But you weren't kidnapped. You're in a hospital –"

"- so you say –"

"- you're in a hospital," the woman continued, more firmly, "a _mental hospital_. You're here so you can get better."

Alice doubled over, like she'd been dealt a physical blow. The woman was still talking, but her voice was strangely muted, the sound of her own breathing too loud.

…_she told us that you've been hallucinating. That you've been writing messages for yourself on walls. Miss Liddell? Alice? _Alice?

Alice felt her knees hit the floor, the impact shuddering through her entire body.

The door swung open and she felt someone touching her shoulders, trying to pull her upright, but her whole body felt suddenly very, very heavy.

_I'm sure you'll see the irony of all this in time, Miss Liddell. _

Alice suddenly wanted to cry.

* * *

"What have you done with her?"

Regina pulled her front door open a little more fully and crossed her arms. "You're going to have to be a little more specific, Miss Swan."

Emma resisted the urge to lean forwards and throttle her. "_Alice_. You knew that she talked to me and Henry, and now she's missing."

The mayor raised one, perfect eyebrow, her mouth twisting. "Well, I can honestly say I knew nothing about my lawyer pandering to the opposition. That's very interesting to know. On the other hand…maybe it's not so surprising, given your _similarity _in appearance."

Emma blinked. Regina could see it too? How then, could Alice – and the entire _town_ – not?

She mentally shook her head. "I know you know something."

"And I'm not pretending that I don't, dear. I'll happily show you where Alice is."

"Graham's searching half the town for her, and you didn't think to alert him of her whereabouts?"

Regina rolled her eyes, grabbing a coat and walking out of the house. "_Sheriff Humbert _is keeping up appearances. The town will learn in time as to where she is."

"This is sick," Emma muttered, following Regina down the little stone path and out onto the street to the mayor's car. "You abducted her and you're not even denying it."

"I didn't abduct her," Regina said, coolly, slipping smoothly into the driver's seat. Emma ripped open the door viciously and clambered into the passenger seat. "You'll understand soon enough."

She started the car, peeling off the curb. "By the way, I find it very interesting that you're now on first name basis with Graham."

Emma ignored the blatant inference and glared out of the window.

To her surprise and worry, instead of driving them to some shady cabin out in the woods, Regina drove to the hospital. "Is she hurt?" Emma asked immediately, glancing up at the building as they parked.

Regina climbed out of the car, following Emma's line of sight to the patient's rooms up above them. "Oh, she's not up _there_," she tapped her foot on the tarmac of the parking lot. "She's under here."

Emma looked at her, her eyes wide. Regina smiled. "You'll see."

She led Emma round the back of the hospital to a plain-looking steel door, which she unlocked using a key she withdrew from her coat pocket. "After you," Regina said, gesturing for Emma to go through.

Emma shot her one, wary look, and stepped through the doorway.

She found herself on the top step of a dark, gloomy stairwell. At the bottom, she could just make out a dimly illuminated corridor. "She's really down here?"

Regina rolled her eyes. "This isn't a trick Miss Swan. Miss Liddell is down there."

"_Underneath _the hospital," Emma repeated, still not quite comprehending the situation as she started down the stairs. "What is this place? "

Regina didn't reply and Emma felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise.

Nearing the bottom of the stairs she began to hear noises - banging and groaning and talking coming from several different places. She frowned as they reached the corridor and saw a receptionist's desk up ahead. _This isn't happening, _Emma thought to herself. Everything seemed to surreal.

"Madam Mayor," said the woman behind the desk, politely. "Have you come to see our newest patient?"

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble," replied Regina, and Emma hated the falsely kind crocodile smile she fixed onto her face. The woman grabbed some keys and slipped out from behind the desk.

"This way then," she said, glancing at Emma briefly before leading them further down the corridor.

Emma was bewildered to see lines of doors either side of her – and not just normal doors, but doors with bars on; cells. She glanced into one room and saw a man drawing strange markings on the walls, muttering to himself feverishly as he did so.

"What is this place?" she asked, unsettled.

The receptionist who was leading them looked back over her shoulder at her. "Storybrooke's Psychiatric Specialist Hospital."

Emma felt a shiver run up her spine, and she wrapped her arms round herself. "This is what you do to people who oppose you?" she hissed at Regina under her breath. "You lock them up in a mental institute?!"

"This was for her own good, Miss Swan"

"You actually think I'm going to believe that she's insane?"

Before Regina could reply, their guide turned to them. "This is her," she said, smiling.

Emma stood on her tiptoes, glancing through the barred window, and felt her entire stomach drop.

She could see Alice clearly, her blonde hair dirtied and tangled around her face. She was curled up in a bed across the cell with her back to Emma, clearly sleeping.

"You can't keep her locked in there. This is illegal!" cried Emma, whirling round. The sight of Alice, curled up in dirty clothing – filth – had somehow brought a lump to her throat. _You just met this woman, Emma, _she reminded herself.

"Not illegal," said the receptionist, calmly. "She needs treating – she is one of our top-priority patients."

"Treating for _what_?"

How could you prove that the most centered, down-to-earth woman that Emma had ever met was clinically insane? How could Regina even go about convincing people of that?

Regina reached into her coat pocket once again and withdrew a picture which she handed over to Emma. She realized she was staring at a photograph of the word's _YOU'RE LATE _painted on a wall. "Graham phoned me a couple of nights back at about 3AM in the morning. He'd gotten a call from Dr Whale saying that Alice Liddell thought somebody had broken into her apartment and written _that _on her bedroom wall. Nothing taken. Nothing stolen. Just that message. Whale had found red paint in her apartment and surmised she must have done it herself – there were no locks broken, the apartment was completely secure. Dr Hopper was called too and Alice admitted to having hallucinations of a white rabbit."

_You're late…white rabbit. _Emma's heart gave a jolt. Alice in Wonderland. She glanced back at the picture in her hand. "But she's not…"

"Insane?" asked Regina. "So you think she's telling the truth? That a white rabbit's stalking her?"

Emma felt sick to her stomach. She looked back into the cell and jumped slightly when she realized Alice was awake, staring up at her.

"She can't distinguish between what is fantasy and what is reality anymore, Miss Swan," said Regina. "For all of us in this town, there is a distinct line. For Alice, that line is blurred. We have to help her find it again."

Emma ignored her, staring down at Alice. She waited for her to open her mouth, to say something – anything.

She never did.

* * *

Alice toyed with the idea of insanity in the darkest moment of the night.

She lay awake in bed, tossing and turning, thinking of those client's she'd defended: the one's where she'd never truly believed their innocence, the ones that, deep down, she knew they were guilty. She didn't _want _them to get acquitted, but it was what she was paid to do. Do a job she didn't believe in.

Was that where it had started? This line blurring thing? Looking someone in the eye and being unsure of their innocence, and, for all the world, not caring because at the end of the day – hey – you were going to charge them an arm and a leg for your defense anyway?

She had no idea what to believe in now.

What was insanity and what was reality? Why was the difference so difficult to distinguish?

A talking white rabbit – fantasy, surely. But something in the back of her mind kept on niggling, the _what if_, thought. _What if it's not? _What if there was another world out there, like Regina had said?

Alice felt like her mind was being pulled in two directions. So it was of no surprise to her that when she rolled over she saw the white rabbit again, standing in her cell.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, groaning.

Its whiskers twitched nervously and it was wiping its hands – paws – down the front of its waistcoat like a human would if they were sweating nervously. "I can get you out of here."

Alice blinked. This was the first thing the rabbit had said to her that wasn't overly cryptic and confusing. "You can get me out of here?" she repeated, dubiously.

The rabbit nodded furiously. And she raised both eyebrows. "Well, okay then."

The rabbit shook its head now. "You must promise," it said, feverishly. "You are very, very late. You must promise to follow me."

"I will."

Seemingly satisfied it hurried off and –

Alice blinked. Vanished. Or, at least, had disappeared through the door.

_Well how can I follow it when it does something like that? _She thought, annoyed.

The rabbit reappeared again, and she realized it wasn't disappearing into thin air; it was walking through the door. "Come!" it said, sounding frustrated. "Follow me!"

"You want me to – ?" Alice gestured to the door.

"Yes, yes, yes," it said.

_I'm dreaming, _she thought, _Dr Hopper will probably say this is me struggling with my need to escape from this damn cell and the rabbit 'externalizes' it, or whatever._ She stood up anyway and stepped right through the wall after the rabbit.

When one just accepted that strange, mad things were going to happen, it was better just to go along with them, and not question events overly as they happen.

Finding herself on a deserted corridor, Alice cast round for the rabbit. It was at standing at the bottom of a staircase a little way off, waving her over hurriedly. She huffed – _impatient little bugger _– and followed it.

It led her up some stairs and through another door and –

Alice felt fresh air on her face.

She was outside.

She stared at the rabbit in horror, the cool wind acting as a slap to the face. "You're _real_?!"

"Well, really," it snapped, actually _putting its hands on its hips_. "It took you long enough."

She blinked rapidly and then felt annoyance bubble up inside of her. "You _did _write that message on my wall, didn't you?!"

The rabbit was running into the forest behind the woods now and Alice had to jog to keep up. "You weren't paying attention!" it yelled over its shoulder to her.

"To what?"

"That we needed you!"

"We?" she asked. "Who's we –"

Something hard hit her from behind and she cried out, falling to the forest floor. Her face was crushed into the ground, and she scrabbled at pine needles, trying to get up. The rabbit was getting further and further away – a blob of white disappearing into the darkness.

Something heavy was pressed into her back, and she realized it was must be a person when her arms were pinned to her sides by rough hands. "Get off me!" Alice yelled, furiously, peering desperately into the trees. The rabbit was gone.

"You can't follow it," a man's voice said, surprising calm as she struggled.

She froze, catching him off guard by spinning onto her back. "You can see it too?!" she demanded.

She found the man who had pinned her to be roughly her own age, with dark features and hair dressed in a heavy woolen coat and scarf. "Yes," he muttered. She lay still and when he realized she wasn't going to struggle anymore, released her arms quickly, standing up.

Alice remained on her back however, staring up at him. Her mind was reeling with so many questions, but looking at the stranger now, all she could think to ask was: "Where does it want to take me?"

The man's expression darkened and he looked off into the forest where the rabbit had disappeared to.

"Nowhere you want to go," he replied, quietly.

* * *

**A/N **Haha, I said you'd meet Jefferson…in the last…two hundred words of the chapter…still unnamed and referred to as 'the stranger'. Oh dear.

For all of you who have seen the trailer for Once Upon A Time's _Wonderland_, I hope this didn't sound too much like their storyline. I was brutally aware whilst writing this that I was running dangerously close to their own version of events with Alice – following a rabbit out of a mental institute and what not.

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and please, review!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	7. Chapter 6

**A/N **I'm re-posting this chapter just to quickly say that I made a trailer for this fic which you can find by following a link on my profile page.

Also, I'm going on holiday tomorrow for a week, so the likelihood of chapter 7 being out around then might not be possible, though hopefully I'll be able to bring my laptop with me to start writing it!

* * *

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND **

* * *

**CHAPTER 6**

* * *

Alice was still lying on her back amongst the damp fallen leaves. She could feel a headache starting to form around the site where the back of her skull had made contact with the ground. Lack of food and surprise were causing her head to spin.

"Who are you?" she demanded, stupidly.

Her brain, a compilation of ideas of rules and order and logic was struggling to cope with anything but the basic questions. In an act of almost self-preservation Alice's whole world, curiosity and all thought processes had shrunken down to encase this one man in front of her.

Focus on anything else and she'd go insane.

_No. _She snapped at herself harshly. _Don't even _think _that._

The stranger was still looking off into the distance, and his silence gave Alice a brief moment to think. She had many faults, but being stupid wasn't one of them. It was late at night and the dim glow of the moon and the ethereal lights of Storybrooke provided only minimal lighting. How convenient; how easy, then, that this man should have crossed her path when he had been most needed.

Had he followed her from the hospital? Waited for her out in the darkness?

The last thought made her shudder and she scrambled to her feet quickly.

The movement must have caught his attention, because his head moved and his eyes flickered to her face. The shadows of the boughs of trees slipped across his pale skin as easily as running water. Now that she looked at him fully, there was a cliché sense of foreboding to the long coat, dark eyes and heavy brows.

"Who, me?" he asked, in return to her question.

Alice folded her arms. "Is there anyone else here?" she asked, her voice like battery acid. His answer had been mocking, not honest. His evasiveness was making her edgy.

_Trust no one. _

"In woods like these you can never be sure."

"It was a rhetorical question."

"I know."

She glared. He gave her a slightly unbalanced smirk. What had happened to the serious, haunted man who had stopped her from following the white rabbit? This was like an entirely new person.

A thought occurred to Alice and her stomach dropped.

"You didn't escape from the mental hospital too, did you?"

He laughed. It was quiet in the woods and the sound carried long after he had fallen silent. "No. Is that where _you _came from?"

"I'm not crazy."

"That wasn't what I was asking, though the vehemence of your denial is interesting."

She resisted the urge to glare at him again, or snap some kind of insult back. Whoever this man was, no matter how much pleasure he seemed to garner off of irritating her, no matter how little she could trust him, he still had the answers she needed. "The mayor locked me up there because – because –"

Alice stopped.

_You'll see the irony of this in time, Miss Liddell. _

She'd been locked up under the guise that she was insane. The irony that Regina's comment implied was that she hadn't been insane – that she had been the only sane one. Why? What had she seen – what did she _know_ – that warranted her lock down? It was like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.

Alice thought back to that dim, hazy conversation she and Regina had had in the early hours of the morning outside of her flat. The mayor had said something about 'the other world's taking note of her', and with the white rabbit's presence – logically - it could only be Wonderland.

_But it's a storybook. _She thought to herself, feeling sick. _It's a story written for kids. A twenty eight year old woman just doesn't get caught up in that kind of thing. _

But no.

There was evidence – hard, solid evidence – beyond reasonable doubt, that proved that somehow, a world existed beyond the one that Alice knew. It was impossible, incomprehensible; but somehow logic had pointed to the illogical.

Alice felt a knot in her chest unravel. She looked the man straight in the eyes. "If I asked you to tell me everything about a curse that may or may not have been placed on this town, what would you say?"

"I'd ask you where _you _heard about a curse on this town."

"The mayor."

Something sparked in his eyes. It looked like hope, or excitement. It wasn't something that Alice would ever put on her resume, but she had always found it easy to detect the finer points of someone's weak-spots.

They stood with several meters of space and darkness between them. The wind occasionally stirred dead leaves on the ground and ruffled his coat (and coldly caressed her skin through the thin pj's she was still wearing). Storybrooke was a distant and partially blocked view through the dense trees behind her.

Somehow, Alice wasn't scared. She trusted implicitly that this man would tell her everything she wanted to know because _he _wanted her to know. There was something desperate and wary about the way he was looking at her now – like a dog who had been beaten and starved its whole life and was now being offered a pound of juicy meat.

"Why would Regina tell you about the curse and then lock you up in a mental institute?" he asked, suspiciously. "That makes no sense."

Alice's mind made a quick calculation and a wry smile crossed her face. "You think maybe she set me up to talk to you?"

"It seems the kind of thing Regina would do."

"But it's not the kind of thing I would do."

He raised an eyebrow and Alice felt a knife twist in her heart. "Not anymore, anyway" she amended. "I would be rotting in a cell right now thanks to her."

Something dark crept into Alice; something savage and vindictive and vengeful.

She knew once she'd gotten the answers she needed here she would go after Regina. There was a cold, uncaring clarity to that idea. She would tear her down from her position as mayor, rip Henry from her clutches; flay her of every last dollar in court and make sure she went to jail. It wouldn't take much. A judge to take the case; witnesses to testify. Nothing a few well placed bribes and a little blackmail wouldn't garner.

Alice had been a key piece in Regina's chess game. Losing her meant making a dangerous enemy. It had been a stupid move, really, on the mayor's part.

"So," she asked, folding her arms. "What's this curse?"

His eyes flashed. Somewhere in her thought process the intensity of her feelings had pushed her closer until they were less that a meter apart and she could see the precise way his eyes slid from serious to teasing. It was a jarring transition and Alice couldn't believe that he wasn't a little crazy - it was also slightly magnetic and captivating, the way his mood swung. A slight thrill ran through her and Alice hoped this wasn't proof that she was one of those women who were turned on by unhinged men. "I could tell you, but I doubt you'd believe me."

"At this point, I'd believe anything."

"And if I told you that the sky was green -?"

She shot him a withering look and moved to step away. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying riling her up – that much was obvious. "Ah, ah, ah," he held up a finger. She stopped backing away automatically. "But the sky _is _green, Alice. In other worlds – just not in this one. If I'm going to tell you about the curse, you need to wrap your pretty little head round that."

"Other worlds," Alice repeated. She said it slowly, forcing herself to sound disbelieving if only on the principal that she wanted to highlight that _she_, at least, wasn't the crazy one. But there was a part of her that was unwillingly curious and intrigued. She had never been beyond Storybrooke in her life, and the small, very human part of her that was fixated with money and power latched onto the idea of exploring numerous other worlds. He must have seen the thought written across her face, because he smirked. "This world is one of the more boring one's, I'll admit."

"Can you just give me the straight facts about this curse please?" she asked, impatiently.

His smirk widened. He reached out and tugged on the end of her blonde hair. (_"__Ow_" she hissed.) "Your hair wants cutting," he said, watching her face with ill-disguised glee as the anger boiled up inside of her.

She swatted his hand away impatiently. It was like talking to a child. No, it was like talking to the most infuriating person in the world. "_If you're going to waste my time then _–"

The change in his demeanor was so abrupt - so sudden - that Alice had to blink rapidly to make sure it had happened. "Waste your time?" he asked, very quietly. His face was utterly blank, his eyes shuttered and devoid of their previous mirth in a way that made the air around them drop twenty degrees. "If you knew time like I did, Alice. If you knew _twenty eight years _of wasted time…" He was walking towards her now, and Alice found herself backing away until her heel hit a tree root and she fell to the floor abruptly. He followed her down, crouching in front of her with an arm canted lazily across his knee in a way a father might kneel before a child to scold them. Alice could feel her heart beating rapidly, a bruise blooming in her lower back. The man leaned in closer. "…what's a few minutes? A day? What's wasting a little more?"

He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small, brass pocket-watch, swinging it in front of her face like a hypnotist. "Ever noticed how time doesn't move here, Alice? No? Of course you didn't. That's part of the curse."

"What _is _the curse?" she pushed, but her voice was quiet and pathetic and slightly hoarse.

He grinned. "All in good time, Alice. All in good time. I like this. I like that someone else might know…but at the same time –" his voice dropped off and he shrugged and suddenly he seemed almost…_normal_. "I was good, once….I mean –" he stared into her eyes, seriously, "I _tried_. I could still try now – but maybe there's not much of a point."

Alice half didn't understand what he was saying, half understood. She carefully pushed herself to her feet, aware of his eyes on her through out the whole, clumsy movement. He didn't stand with her; his face level with her thigh after she had straightened up and she backed away quickly.

The physical space between them lessened the tension in her gut perceptibly, and she didn't want to over-analyze what that meant. "We're not like children's story book characters," she said, quietly. She wasn't sure why she was reassuring this man that had both managed to frighten and infuriate her with an astonishing expertise. "There's no definitive good and evil. There are grey areas."

He laughed and shook his head like she'd said something funny and straightened from his crouch. "Maybe."

They were quiet for a moment. Alice realized that he wasn't going to tell her anything – for now, at least. She was confident that he wouldn't be too hard to crack though - she could start with exploiting that vulnerability to be good, for a start.

He was watching her with a similarly unreadable expression.

"What's your name?" Alice asked, finally, by way of goodbye.

He smiled, but it wasn't a real one. Alice realized that he'd shown many emotions since she'd met him, but happiness hadn't been one of them.

To be fair, she hadn't exactly been little-miss-sunshine either - captivity could do that to you.

He glanced up into the starry night sky and then back at her. "Jefferson," he said, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

She nodded. "And if I needed to find you…?"

"I'll find you," he promised.

That was suspicious and worrying and overly ambiguous, but she didn't push it. He had worn her down and she didn't have the energy to fight. "Okay."

"Okay," he returned.

She hesitated – he grinned. "Sea-View apartments are that way," he said, pointing to her right. "Walk for five minutes in that direction and you'll come to Jack and Jill's grocery store on the edge of town."

"Thanks," Alice muttered, heading in the direction he'd indicated at. She'd only taken a few steps when she whirled round quickly. "Wait a second, how did you know where I lived –"

But he was already gone, and all she could see was a small clearing of leaves and dark trees.

* * *

**A/N **Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been in Kenya for three weeks, and I should have written a message for you all warning that that was the reason for my lack of updating on this story, but my mind was so full of so many different things before the trip that I completely forgot to – sorry!

Regarding this chapter, I know that Jefferson's not really this crazy (at this point in his life) in Once Upon A Time, but I absolutely adored Sebastian Stan's portrayal of crazy-Jefferson in Season 2, so I decided to mix that in with the slightly more sane Jefferson. It made an interesting blend.

Thank you for all your lovely reviews – I'm so flattered that you're all enjoying this story, and it was great to come back from Kenya and read all of your comments.

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	8. Chapter 7

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 7**

* * *

Alice watched the water for a moment before entering Sea-View apartments. She looked out at the lonely grey waves – touched yellow and gold by the rising sun – and let the wind blow her tangled hair round her face. She breathed in; tasted salt.

The glass doors hissed open as she entered the building. The lighting was dim – dark. The synthetic ferns in each corner of the empty lobby cast shadows up the walls.

The elevator wheezed worryingly a few times on the way up to her apartment but she didn't take any notice. She tried to mentally calculate what day it was.

Alice gave up when she got to her door and began to fish round for her keys. It was a few seconds until she realized she wouldn't have them and that she was still wearing her pajamas.

The door swung open freely at her touch, though. It was mildly irritating that no one had thought to lock it. Then again, she'd never given anyone a copy of the key and God knew where her own was.

Alice stooped and went through the post. A tax return – good. Bills, bills, bills – bad. One was headed with the date October 27th. That meant she'd been in the cell four days.

Alice threw the hastily opened envelopes onto the coffee table, hit play on the answer machine and went to the kitchen to set the kettle to boil. Across the room, Marian's disembodied voice spoke.

'_Rise and shine, Alice! This is Marian. Thanks for mysteriously disappearing from work yesterday. Robert's booked you a meeting with Mr Wae's lawyers at 9.30, and he wants a full briefing beforehand so you're going to have to get in for 8.45 sharp. Mainline some coffee into your system or something. Sorry, I know it's early. See you soon. Bye! Bye.' _

The kettle clicked, the answer phone moved on to the next message. Alice didn't move to get a mug. She leaned back against the kitchen counter and mimed holding a cigarette between the index and middle finger of her left hand. She took an imaginary drag.

Inhaled. Exhaled.

She'd quit when she got out of her last major relationship four years ago when she was twenty four; she could barely remember how calming it felt now.

'_Hello – Alice. It's Dr Hopper. I was just wandering if you wanted to book an appointment for any time soon. I think it's important that you talk about what – er – happened –' _he sounded worried and hesitant. Alice shook her head with a wry smile and pretended to stub out her cigarette out on the top of the microwave. She fixed herself up a coffee and walked into her bedroom.

'_Alice, it's Mary Margaret. You didn't show up to give me a lift to work this morning. I phoned Marian and she said you might be sick. I've tried your mobile about ten times and you're not picking up. I'm coming round tonight –' _

Alice walked to her bedside table and picked up her Blackberry. She pressed a button; dead. She threw it back down on her bed and walked to stand in front of the opposite wall.

It had been re-painted where the message had been. It was faint, but you could see the difference between the new coat of paint and the old if you looked hard enough.

She traced her fingers over the white paint where she imagined the words would have been. YOU'RE LATE.

Her finger moved carefully and precisely. Like a small child just learning to write.

'…_Alice, it's Marian. Why aren't you returning my calls? Robert wants to know if you're well enough to work from home – he wants to send the paperwork through via email. Please get back to me…' _

Something in Alice's stomach clenched and she snatched her hand away from the wall as if physically burned. She backed up quickly, looking at the four white walls that surrounded her.

Four white walls.

'_Alice, it's me,' _(Mary Margaret, stressed – tired?) _'I came round last night and you weren't in. Dinah was starving so I took her back to mine. You're still not picking up your mobile. Marian's going to file a missing person's report tomorrow if you don't show up for work. Please, please, please phone me back.' _

Alice's ears rang with the voices of her friends.

She was in her cell again.

No, she in her bedroom, at her apartment. Apartment number 10.

'_-I'm really worried now-' _

'…_phoning again about an appointment…'_

'_-this isn't normal-'_

Her breathing was suddenly ragged and uneven as she stumbled to her wardrobe and tore through her clothes.

_Get me out of here_, she thought, desperately.

She pulled on her jogging gear, barely even pausing to lace up her trainers before exiting the apartment and racing back out into the open world.

She picked a random direction and began to run.

It was easier to get oxygen, now. Maybe because she couldn't not breathe anymore and the exercise made her lungs burn.

She ran every day; six miles – sometimes more. It was an effective coping strategy, but that was for when she'd had a stressful day at work, not –

_None of this happened, _she thought, determinedly.

It was a cold dawn. Seagulls were shouldering the wind overhead – the weather would be changing for the worse soon; there were clouds to the North that promised rain.

_None of this really happened_.

Alice hadn't realized she was going somewhere until she stopped running and found herself outside a house.

She entered. The apartment door was locked. Alice banged on it so loudly that she set off a dog in the neighboring building.

There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the other side of the wall and the door was flung open.

Mary Margaret was dressed in pajamas of her usual color pallet – a mixture of light lavenders and creamy whites. Her eyes went wide.

"_Alice_?"

Alice's forehead kissed the side of the doorframe for a moment as she collected herself before she twisted and looked her friend in the eye.

"Hi."

Mary Margaret covered her mouth with her hands for a second and then removed them, struck speechless. "Alice, what – what _happened_? Where_ were_ you?"

"If I said holiday, would you believe me?"

"No!"

"Can I come in?"

Mary Margaret shook her head, but the gesture was in disbelief and not in objection and Alice slipped through the gap between the door and the wall.

She sat down at the light oak table in one of the mismatched chairs, still breathing hard from her run.

She felt too hot.

She got up again and opened some windows and then sat back down and breathed in deeply. Mary Margaret was watching her. She'd shut the door and stood by it, her arms crossed.

"You seem agitated," she said, quietly.

Alice ran herself a glass of water underneath the tap. "I'm fine. I'm calm," she took a sip. "I'm fucking Zen."

"Convincing."

"I try."

Mary Margaret rolled her eyes and the pair sat back down at the table, Mary Margaret opposite Alice. "You've been gone four days."

"I know."

"No one heard a word from you."

"I know that, too."

She checked the clock hanging on the wall on the other side of the room. "It's five in the morning."

Alice hesitated, the glass freezing half way to her mouth. Strands of hair were falling out of her ponytail, sticking to the cooling sweat on her forehead. "I'm sorry."

Mary Margaret looked visibly upset, but Alice knew her well enough to know it wasn't _at _her, it was _for _her.

For some reason, the level of her friend's caring made guilt wash through her. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I can leave if you want."

"Alice, that's the last thing I want."

Her fingers began to tap agitatedly on the table as she stared into Mary Margaret's earnest, devastatingly honest eyes. If the roles were reversed, would Mary Margaret tell her everything? Risk being branded as insane?

Talking about what had happened was the last thing Alice felt physically or emotionally equipped to do right then and Mary Margaret seemed to sense it with that uncanny sixth sense she had.

"I'm going to fix up some hot chocolate," she said, leaning over and squeezing Alice's hand. "You want some?"

"I love it when you treat me like I'm ten."

Mary Margaret rolled her eyes again, moving behind the breakfast bar and browsing through cupboards for cocoa powder. "My 4th graders wouldn't give me half the trouble you do."

Alice watched as she placed a pan on the stove and filled it with milk; adding each individual ingredient like it was a particularly difficult chemical equation, with complete and utter concentration.

"Why do you take such good care of me?" The question had meant to be teasing. Instead, Alice found that her voice came out genuinely curious and brooding.

Mary Margaret looked up from adding cinnamon with a sad little smile on her face. She seemed to hesitate and then said; "because I look at you and still see that twenty one year old girl I met at her parent's funeral. I guess I still feel the need to mother you a bit."

Alice was quiet as she pushed back a wave of suppressed memories. "That was seven years ago, we're almost the same age now," she pointed out.

"I guess old habits die hard."

Mary Margaret set a mug of hot chocolate down on the table in front of Alice and warmed her hands round her own cup. She'd sprinkled cinnamon on top; just how they both liked it.

They were silent. Alice made a whirlpool of cinnamon in her milk froth.

Outside, the sky was brightening up. There were small birds hopping round on the windowsill; the sky a dull and murky backdrop behind them.

Alice glanced at Mary Margaret surreptitiously over the rim of her mug as she took a gulp of sweet, thick hot liquid. Saint Charity. Margarita. How many nicknames had she come up with for her friend? How many countless times had they sat together like this late at night or in the early hours of the morning?

Something furry brushed against Alice's leg. She looked down. "Dinah!" she smiled, scratching the black cat affectionately behind the ear. She looked up at Mary Margaret. "Thank you, by the way."

"It's fine. Emma's more of a dog person, but we both managed okay."

Alice blinked. "Emma's here?"

"Someone said my name?"

Alice and Mary Margaret swiveled round in their chairs quickly. Emma was standing a few steps from the bottom of the stairs, already dressed for the day. Her eyes met Alice's.

She knew.

Or at least, she knew something.

"Oh my God," Emma muttered, stunned, as she saw Alice.

Alice watched her warily as she hurried down the stairs and grabbed a hat and scarf from the sofa. She glanced at Mary Margaret, then at Alice. "C'mon," she said, "me and you need to go on a walk."

Alice stood from her seat abruptly. "What do you know?"

"Not here." Emma was moving for the door.

Mary Margaret was standing now, too, looking between the two blonde haired women. "Okay, what the hell is going on?" she snapped.

"Alice," Emma said, impatiently.

"_Alice_?" Mary Margaret insisted.

She paused, torn, and then strode over to Emma. "I'll be back," she promised Mary Margaret.

Emma shot her a look and then pulled open the door. She was walking fast as she led Alice out of the apartments and then down the street. The air smelt of rain; there were a few cars out now, tooling slowly down the road.

"Where are we going?" Alice was slightly taller, and her longer legs carried her to Emma's side despite her fast pace.

"Whenever Henry wants to talk to me, we meet up at this place near the beach –"

"You're taking me to see _Henry_?" Alice asked, disbelieving.

"What? No. It's just somewhere private."

It took five minutes. The road tailed off into a path that led them through a few sandy dunes and up to a children's play castle that fringed the beach. Emma clambered on first, sitting so that her leg's hung off the edge and Alice sat next to her. Emma was dressed in her usual leather jacket, jeans and knee-length boots; a red knit hat covering her hair and ears.

In comparison Alice was dressed in Nike running clothes.

It was cold, and both their cheeks were turning pink from the wind.

"Emma," Alice said, quietly. The wind had picked up; the scarf she'd tied round her neck to keep her chest warm whilst running kept on blowing across her body. "_What do you know_?"

"I know where you were."

"And you didn't _help me_?!"

"No -" Emma protested. Her hand flew to her throat to fidget with the small, silver circle hanging round her neck. "– don't freak out on me, okay? I only found out yesterday morning."

Alice shook her head, looking away for a second. "Regina locked me in a cell," she said, almost accusingly.

"I know. It's –"

"Highly illegal. Breaking several laws?"

Emma raised an eyebrow. "You're going to go after her, aren't you?"

Alice didn't reply.

She changed tact at lightening speed. "Why did she lock you up?"

"…she found out I met up with you and Henry."

Little white lies were the closest thing Alice would get to telling the truth right now.

Something in Emma's face tightened. She looked at Alice for a long time and then nodded. "And you got out…?"

"A man helped me."

"A man? That's it?"

"What are you after, like, a list?" Alice asked, suspicion creeping into her tone. "Emma, why does this feel like an interrogation?"

"It's not."

"I'm well versed in cross-interrogation. I know when someone's digging for information."

Emma touched the necklace again.

"Are you okay, at least?" she asked, eventually.

Alice was surprised at how much she sounded like she genuinely cared. "I'm dealing, yeah." She tried to shrug uncaringly. Another lie.

Emma made a choice quickly. She knew trust went both ways, and right now her and Alice's relationship was walking on shaky ground. For some reason, she found herself earnestly wanting to make some kind of connection with the other woman.

"Look, I know what it's like to be locked in a cell against your will. I went to prison for ten months when I was eighteen."

Alice's head whipped round. "For what?"

"Possession of stolen goods…I…I wasn't supposed to be caught. Someone I thought I could trust sold me in."

The corner of Alice's mouth lifted into a wry smile. "That explains a lot."

Emma raised an eyebrow and couldn't help the laugh that escaped her. "_Excuse me_?"

"Come on, Emma. You know what you're like. The trust issues, the barriers."

"I'm not that bad."

Alice threw her a look.

"_I'm not_," Emma insisted. "Hey, I moved in with Mary Margaret, didn't I?"

"Emma, Mary Margaret – literally – would not hurt a fly. If you didn't trust Mary Margaret, I would be seriously worried for your mental well-being."

For some reason, the last sentence hung in the air like something foul. Emma looked away from Alice quickly like her eyes might convey something she didn't want to.

Alice took a deep breath - trying to dispel the feeling that she was going to throw up. "Well, I should get on with my run."

"Yeah. Okay."

She let herself drop the few feet onto the sand below with a dull _thump_. She gave Emma a small little wave and then turned her back on her and began to jog back towards Storybrooke, her ponytail swinging behind her like a metronome.

Emma watched her go, her expression conflicted.

Alice had lied about the reason she'd been put in the cell. She'd lied about how she'd got out, too.

The question was, _why_?

* * *

Regina stalked into the diner, throwing open the door with more force than was necessary.

Her associate was sat in a booth at the back of the shop, a two-table radius of empty chairs around him. It was generally empty except for that waste-of-space security guard already half-way drunk at 8 in the morning sitting at the bar.

Regina didn't even shrug out of her coat as she quickly sat in the seat opposite Sidney Glass. The man, as he often did, looked like a kicked puppy. His eyes were down cast, staring into the murky depths of the tea he was drinking. He only raised them when Regina started to talk.

"Alice Liddell escaped from her cell last night."

"And how did she manage that?"

Regina knew perfectly well how, she just couldn't tell him. Sometimes this curse was so frustrating. "It hasn't been investigated yet," she snapped.

Sidney took a sip of his tea and settled the cup back down on the saucer with unusual care. "It seems to me, then," he said, smoothly. "You'd be wanting Graham, rather than me."

Regina opened her mouth to reply but the young waitress in the slutty red clothing came over and moodily demanded her order. She waved her away, impatiently.

"No. I need you. When Alice Liddell went into the psychiatric ward, I never planned on her coming out of it again. Somehow, she escaped after just four days. A woman like her isn't going to let something like that just slide. Her parents are dead, she hasn't got any close family – in short, she has very little to lose."

"Everyone has something to lose."

"Maybe." Regina checked her phone for any messages and then looked at Sidney. "I want you to find whatever you can out about her and use it against her. I want her crushed. I want you to destroy her."

Amusement crossed Sidney's face. He drained his cup of the final dregs of tea and fixed the woman across from him with a pointed gaze. "…you mean before _she _destroys _you_."

Regina's lip curled into a snarl and she slipped out of the booth. "Just get it done," she threw over her shoulder, and exited the diner.

Sidney watched her go and sighed. Ruby approached to take his order again and he decided he needed something stronger than tea. He ordered a double whisky.

Another young life ruined.

The things he did for love.

* * *

**A/N **I managed to write this whilst on holiday! Turns out copious amounts of sun is good for inspiration.

For once, this is one chapter I don't have any reservations or doubts about before posting. I'm actually really proud of it!

Thank you for all your amazing reviews, alerts and favorites. They really do keep me motivated.

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	9. Chapter 8

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 8**

* * *

Alice was jogging down the main street just as the sky split and spilled; a fine sheet of drizzle starting to fall. She ran past all the usual shops; Granny's Diner, Marine Garage and the Dark Star Pharmacy (had this town changed at all in the years she had lived there?). She bought a pack of cigarettes from a corner shop before she could convince herself not to and then ducked across the road into Mr Geppetto's hardware store.

It smelt faintly of wood shavings and paint inside and the old man looked up from polishing the counter as she entered.

"Ah, Aleece," he greeted, his Italian accent elongating her name attractively, "how can I help you today my dear?"

She smiled and approached the counter, bringing with her the smell of fresh rain. "I was hoping to buy some wallpaper, actually."

He stroked his long, white mustache for a moment and then nodded. "I think I've got a few things you'll like." He disappeared into the back of the shop and then reappeared, lying six different roles of wallpaper down on the counter in front of her.

She barely looked - choosing the patterned, brightly colored role.

"Do you want any help putting it up?" he asked, running her money through the till. "It's not easy."

"I'm sure I can manage Mr Geppetto."

He dropped a small shower of change into her waiting hand. "Well, you know where to find me if you change your mind."

He handed over the wallpaper in a tall plastic bag.

Such a kind, sad old man, Alice thought. He had always wanted children, but the chance had disappeared with his wife when she had died years ago.

Storybrooke was full of sob stories like that. Each one ramming the next further down into the mud.

Alice left the shop, pulling her hood back up as she did so. After a while, you just stopped listening.

Back at her apartment she changed into an old, large shirt and black leggings. She lit a cigarette and stood, staring at her white bedroom walls for a moment as she blew smoke rings; quietly remembering how she had spent nights staring at walls like these, scared and desperate and alone.

_You're going down, you crazy, controlling, kidnapping bitch, _she thought; a mental message to Regina. _Enjoy your life while it lasts, because by the end of the month you're going to be in prison. _

Alice finished her cigarette, found some calming music on youtube, and spent the majority of that morning slowly erasing any reminder of her cell underneath strips of tastelessly patterned bright wallpaper.

When she'd finished she stepped back to admire her handiwork. It was mad, and clashed horribly with the rest of the room, but somehow – unexpectedly – she found that part of herself liked it.

She picked up her Blackberry from the bedside table and dialed Judge Mitchell's number. As the mobile rang she moved to the window and looked past the rain of tears splashing down the glass to the street below, watching as the cobbled road turned to a whirlpool of water.

He picked up on the seventh ring.

"Hello, Judge Mitchell? It's Alice Lidell…yes, I was wandering if you would be prepared to sit in on a case…mmm…against Regina Mills, actually…"

Alice paused, listening to the older man's protests and smiled. "I was thinking a four thousand dollar payout before and after the court case might change your mind?"

She remembered Dinah was still at Mary Margaret's and grabbed a pen and made a note to pick the cat up on the back of her hand.

There was static for several seconds on the line as Judge Mitchell tried to make his decision.

He said something very quietly.

"Yes, in cash…" Alice assured him.

Down below, Ruby was exiting the building; a splash of red blood in the grey surroundings. She pulled up her hood and ran out into the rain. "No…no," Alice said, down the phone, "…I promise you won't be disappointed."

A few seconds later, she hung up.

* * *

Emma walked into the police station an hour after her talk with Alice.

She found Graham in his office, bent over paperwork, and leant against the doorframe. "Busy?"

"Not particularly." He looked up, dropping his pen and leaning back in his chair. "Why?"

"I need you to help me check something out."

Graham made a disbelieving sound in the back of his throat, rubbing a hand across the stubble on his jaw line. "When I gave you this job, I seem to remember stating clearly that you couldn't use your position to solve personal issues. Otherwise every time Henry goes out with a girl you'll be doing background checks on her, her family, and her pet dog."

"Henry's not old enough to date yet."

"You," said Graham, picking his pen back up and leaning forward to re-examine the sheets of paper in front of him, "have a talent for missing the point."

"Okay," conceded Emma, changing tact. "But this isn't personal." He paused mid-scribble and looked up at her, eyebrow raised. "- much."

"You want to investigate Alice Liddell's escape, don't you?"

"Doesn't it bug you – just a little bit – that she got out after just four days; never mind the fact that she was high security?"

"No, because I'd rather not kick open that particular hornet's nest."

Emma threw herself down in the chair opposite his and leant across the desk. "Graham, I'm worried she's got herself into something big. I'm worried that she's going to get hurt."

"You said this wasn't personal."

She glared at him. "Emma, if you dive into this, you're going to get a whole host of answers that you probably wish you'd never found. I don't want you to get hurt, either."

She did her best to ignore all the emotional context that line had implied and entailed. "Just this morning," she bargained, tying her hair back into a tight ponytail. "We check out the psychiatric ward below the hospital; get in, get out. Two hours, tops."

"Promise?"

"No."

She was already half way out the door. Graham watched her for a moment and then sighed and stood quickly, grabbing his jacket from off the back of his chair and running after her.

* * *

The tarmac of the hospital parking lot was already skiddy with drizzle when Emma and Graham ran across it. Rain puddles splashed up her legs as she led him round the back of the building; through the heavy metal doors and down the stairs.

"You lost lady?"

Emma stopped on the bottom step. A janitor with one elbow propped up on his broom was squinting up at her. "You're not supposed to be down here."

"I'm the Sheriff's deputy," she said, holding up her this-lets-me-go-wherever-I-like badge.

"Uhu." He didn't look convinced.

Graham placed a hand on her shoulder, slipping round her. "She's with me - we're here to look at Alice Liddell's cell."

"Graham? Mayor came down to check things out this morning. Didn't figure she'd send you in, too."

His hand tightened perceptibly on Emma's shoulder. "There was a change of plan."

All traces of suspicion left the janitor's face. He went back to sweeping. "Right you are, then. Nurse's office is down there, first door on the right."

"Thanks," Emma bit out as she stalked past him, sardonic. Graham a few steps behind her.

"Do you get the impression we're not wanted down here?" she muttered under her breath to him.

He was glancing round the dark corridor warily, as if one of the psychotic inmates might suddenly burst out at them at any minute. "No," he replied. "Just you."

"Great."

The head nurse's office door was ajar. Through the gap, Emma watched a middle-aged woman hang up the phone. …_We'll keep you updated, Mayor Mills. Take care, now. _

Emma knocked. The woman walked over and opened the door more fully.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her smile as well ironed as the white uniform she wore.

"Hi. Yes. We're here to investigate Alice Liddell's escape?"

The smile lost the few degrees of warmth it had had. Her eye's shuttered. Was there something worried or strained about the woman's mouth? Suspicious in her face? Would she redial Regina's number the moment Emma left? "We've got no idea how she managed it," she said, carefully. "We've got CCTV footage of her cell, and, well…" She seemed to make a flip decision and stepped back into her office, indicating for Emma and Graham to follow.

Across one wall were a bank of TV screens covering the stairs, the corridor, an elevator and each individual cell.

_This isn't a psychiatric ward, _Emma thought, a shiver running up her spine, _it's a prison. _

She watched a brown haired woman toss and turn in her sleep for a second before drawing her attention to the screen that the nurse was pointing a remote towards.

The footage rewound to 3 AM the previous night.

Emma realized with a jolt she was staring at Alice, lying down on a bed in her cell, paused and frozen in time on the grainy video tape.

"3 AM last night," the nurse said. "Cell locked from the outside, bars on windows – nobody taped going in or out of the ward that day who shouldn't have been. Somehow, she managed to get out."

"Sounds like the Harry Houdini of the crazy world," Graham muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"She isn't insane," Emma objected vehemently, too late for the words to be taken back. The nurse gave her a lingering, piercing look before turning back to the screen.

She hit play.

Nothing happened for a while, and then Alice sat up very abruptly. The CCTV footage didn't record sound, but she seemed to be holding a conversation with somebody. "Can we get another angle on her cell?" Emma asked, placing her hands on her hips and walking closer to the screen.

"This shows the whole room."

Alice was standing now, her mouth was still moving. She was gesturing with her hands. "No," Emma said, shaking her head. "There's definitely someone there."

"Emma –" Graham began.

"Look at her!" Emma pointed, thrusting a finger at the screen. "Look at her line of sight! She's looking at something. She's talking _at _something – not to herself."

"A hallucination," the nurse suggested.

Emma folded her arms stubbornly. "I'm not buying that."

She shrugged as if to say, _think whatever the hell you want, _and turned her attention back to the CCTV footage. "Right here," she said, "is where…"

Alice suddenly walked across the room, towards the door. The video turned to static.

"It's like that for another thirty seconds," said the nurse, fast forwarding quickly. The screen flickered back into life, the CCTV now showing an empty cell. "And if you look _here_, she's walking up the stairs a few seconds later."

She pointed to the TV that showed the stairwell. Alice was near the top – shoving open the door. A glimpse of the grey and black and white outdoors on the video, and then the door swung back shut behind her and it was just a plain, deserted set of stairs again.

"I can see why you're confused," Graham said, scratching the back of his neck. He looked perplexed. Emma looked as if she was struggling with a particularly difficult maths problem – the answer of which was just out of reach. Her gaze flitted from screen to screen uselessly. One showed the janitor eating his sandwich; an empty cell; a cell with a man drawing patterns on the walls. Were these people crazy because they were here or were they here because they were crazy?

She shook her head.

_None of this makes any sense._

"This is a load of crap," Emma said to Graham, when they left the nurse's office a few minutes later. "_Somebody_ knows something about all of this; it's just buried under a dump of false trails and Regina's lies."

"And you know who that person is?" Graham asked tiredly, rubbing his face. "Alice. And she's not telling you anything, so…" He stopped walking, forcing Emma to halt in her tracks. He looked down at her, then back down the corridor to the cells, then back at her. "Why can't you drop this Emma?"

"Because I don't –" She broke off. Her eyes lit up. "Someone else knows how Alice got out."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're sure?"

"'Totally sure?'? No. 'Pretty damn sure'? Yes."

"Well?"

Emma noticed that both their voices were pitched low. Unconsciously, neither of them wanted to be overheard. "She mentioned a man had helped her."

"Did she also happen to mention the _name_ of this man?"

Emma was quiet.

Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. "Damn it, Emma, I told you following this up wasn't going to lead anywhere."

"No. I can find out." She hesitated. "…Graham, how opposed are you to hacking phones?"

* * *

From the outside, Robert Hawker Attorney's looked pretty swanky. There was a revolving door, and a flagpole jutting out from above the lobby roof. It looked like everything a lawyer agency should do – in a big city. Crammed in between quaint-looking Dr Hopper's and Snow White Café, it looked awkward and out of place.

Alice took the elevator up to her floor and strode smoothly over to Robert's office as if she hadn't been missing from work for four days.

"You called for me to come in?" she asked, pushing open the door.

Robert was sat at his desk. He looked up - but didn't stand – and polished his glasses quickly on the bottom of his shirt. "Yeah. Have a seat – and don't bother trying to make excuses about where you've been for the past few days."

"I'm not in the habit of making excuses," Alice said, coldly – put off by his brisk manner.

"Oh really?" He threw a newspaper down on the table in front of her as she sat in the Queen Anne chair at his desk "Because I'd love to hear the whopper you'd have invented to excuse this."

Alice surveyed the front page of that day's edition of the local newspaper. She thought she might throw up.

_ALICE LIDDELL REINSTATED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT._

_Staff at Storybrooke's Psychiatric Specialist Hospital are sending out a plea for Alice Liddell to return for treatment, it has emerged today. The twenty-eight-year-old lawyer, who was admitted on Friday night after a disturbance at her apartment, managed to escape from the hospital last night, despite being a high-security patient. _

"_It's of paramount importance that she returns to the ward as soon as possible," says Head Nurse, Sally Noakes. "Not only is she very, very sick, but she is a possible danger to herself. We don't want her to get hurt." – _

Who wrote this? Alice's eyes flickered to the bottom of the article. Oh yes, of course, Sidney Glass.

What a simple, easy, convenient way of systematically crushing Alice's career and credibility. What a clever way of ensuring she herself couldn't start this court case against Regina. How thorough. How duplicitous…

She looked up, feigning calm. "You can't honestly believe this?"

"I don't." Robert stood from his chair and began pacing the room agitatedly. "Jesus _Christ_, Alice!" he muttered, running a hand through his hair. "What did you do to Mayor Mills to warrant this?"

She opened her mouth, and he held up a hand. "I don't want to know. Anyway, there's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to be blunt. You're fired. Orders of the new order."

"Got a phone call from Regina, did you?"

"Yeah, and you know what? I was told I either had to fire you, or I could kiss my kids education goodbye. You know what kind of position that's put me in?"

"I think it's fair to say that it's nowhere near as bad as mine." It began to dawn on Alice that this was really happening. She leant forward across the table, begging. "Robert, all my Dad ever wanted for me was for me to become a lawyer –"

"Bringing your Pa into this is a dirty trick."

She fired up. "He was your _friend_. This job. _This _job is all I have left!"

He swallowed and finally stood still. Normally playful brown eyes were now serious and solemn. "Alice," he said, "I think you should consider laying low for a while. Going into hiding."

She collapsed back into the chair. Regina had not won. Regina had _not _won. "You're joking."

"She's serious about you going into that mental hospital."

"I'm not going back there."

He spread his hands. A white flag. "Then, like I said, this is your only option left. Do you have anywhere to go? Somewhere she wouldn't find you? Somewhere she would never know to look?"

Alice rubbed her forehead, warding off a headache.

After the car crash, before they'd wheeled her Dad into emergency surgery, he'd grabbed her hand. _Everything's going to be okay_, he'd said, through the oxygen mask.

Five hours later he was dead.

"Yes," she murmured, already reaching for her mobile. "I can think of someone."

* * *

The Rabbit Hole smelt of dark wood and strong whisky. Dust motes eddied through slats of light as Graham walked in. A bell jangled and a radio was playing behind the bar. He slipped onto a stool and leaned forwards heavily. It had been a long day.

"A pint of Guinness," he ordered, when the gruff bartender approached.

The man muttered something about 'the Irish', but nodded. Graham surreptitiously eyed the two men playing darts. He wondered if he could intimidate them into giving the board up.

The bartender wordlessly slid his drink over the counter as his phone went off.

He checked caller ID. Emma.

"I'm kind of busy, Emma," he said, by way of greeting, staring down into the froth of his pint.

She ignored him. "She's made contact. They're going to meet at the harbor now – how fast can you get there?"

He glanced out the window to his left. The harbor was just down the road. "Pretty fast."

Graham unpinned the Sheriff's badge from his chest. He threw it into his pocket and signaled for the bartender to hold his pint for him. The man grunted.

Graham ran out of the Rabbit Hole. The rain was coming down in thick sheets of grey, heavier now than it had been this morning. He was still holding the phone to his ear as he started off down the street. "-remember," Emma was saying as he pulled his hood up "-don't let her see you."

"I know, Emma," he snapped, already soaked through. "Where are you now?"

"I'm in the cruiser – I think I can see you."

In his peripheral, Graham watched Emma pull up in the police car on the opposite side of the street. The harbor was at the end of the road at the T junction, and suddenly he saw Alice.

She was standing by the railings, black heels adding about four inches to her height and the vast expanse of a lemon-yellow umbrella's canopy protected her from the weather.

A man was running through a tunnel of rain towards her, coat flapping open around him. His head was down. Graham couldn't see his face.

_Damn, damn, damn_.

A truck pulled up next to him, blocking his view.

Moe French.

"Graham!" he said, leaning out the car window. A baseball cap shielded his face from the rain.

"Emma, I can't see him," he said down the phone, his voice tight. "Graham!" Moe French yelled. "We've got a serious problem with those Zimmer kids – they've stolen from the Dark Star Pharmacy again!"

"-I don't know, the rain's making it hard to see –" Graham held the phone loosely at his ear, trying to get rid of Moe French and listen to Emma at the same time.

"I'm sorry to hear that Moe, I'll have to deal with them tomorrow…"

"-he's tall-ish, dark hair. Wearing a long coat –"

Moe moved his van along an inch and Graham's face suddenly hardened. "Emma get out of the car now and get Alice," he instructed abruptly.

"_What_?!"

He ignored Moe, sprinting off down the street, the rain slapping him in the face. "That man's not safe, Emma," he yelled down the phone. "Go and get Alice _now_."

Up ahead the cruiser's door was thrown open. He saw Emma get out, already throwing herself into a dead run.

She reached the corner before he did, about to cross the road when a lorry cut the world in half from left to right – obscuring their view. It moved, and Alice and the man Graham now realized was Jefferson were gone.

He turned away for a second, ripping his hood down and wiping the rain off his face. "Goddammit," he swore, kicking a trash can.

Emma was making her way towards him, her blonde hair already plastered to her head. "Where the hell'd they go?" she yelled, crossing the road.

"I don't know. I didn't see."

"Jesus Christ," she said, touching her forehead. She looked back at the spot Alice had just been, as if expecting her to still be there. "Is she going to be okay? I mean – who is that guy?"

"I've arrested him a few times for stalking and disturbing the peace, but he's always had enough money to buy his way out of jail-time. He's insane but I didn't think…" Graham shook his head. "I never thought he'd be involved with _this_. He keeps to himself; lives alone out in the forest."

"This is beginning to sound like a Jack-the-Ripper horror story," Emma snapped, angry. "We have to go and get her."

"I can't search his house based on a hunch, Emma. I'd need a warrant and that's going to take at least until tomorrow." He hesitated for a second. The sea was being whipped up into a frenzy by the wind. There was sea spray coming up over the railings. "His name's Jefferson," he added, as an after thought.

* * *

**A/N 71 **alerts and counting! Thank you readers!

**You'll Never Take Me Alive – **Alice will go to Wonderland soon. Patience, reader. There's just some plotty, relationshippy fun stuff I have to get out of the way with before she goes. Give it a few more chapters.

Hope you all liked this chapter; please **review **if you did!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	10. Chapter 9

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 9**

* * *

The rain, if possible, was coming down harder.

Not an auspicious beginning, Alice thought, as her green VW beetle traveled up the winding roads to the outskirts of town. Her windscreen wipers were chugging back and forth erratically to catch the kamikaze raindrops. Piled up on the backseat were bags packed with choice belongings; next to her in the passenger seat was Jefferson.

His left leg was jockeying up and down agitatedly in a way that made her want to reach out and grab his knee to still it. The gesture would have seemed too intimate.

He caught her looking and raised a hand to his temple as if to ward off a headache. "Could you keep your eyes on the road?" he said.

"Could you relax, please?" she shot back, her left wrist canted over the steering wheel as she used her right hand to change gears. The engine revved. "We're not going to crash."

"I don't like traveling in cars."

"Yeah?" She glanced at him again. "How do you like to travel?"

He ignored her and looked out the window, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

She grit her teeth and took the next left hard, just to annoy him. It was true, she wasn't driving safely. There was something vaguely reckless pumping through her system. _You're about to disappear indefinitely, Alice_.

They were still steadily climbing. Winter was licking at the woods up here – tree branches were already turning bare. The road followed a narrow gorge under ancient pines for a short while and Alice flicked on the car headlights as the sky faded from stormy grey to night like an old black and white video.

"How much further?"

"Not long," he promised. "It's just up ahead."

The road was leveling out, the sharp corners becoming less frequent. A few minutes later Jefferson directed her off on a right hand turn that turned out to be a sweeping gravel drive.

"You've got to be kidding me," Alice muttered as she parked at the bottom of wide stone steps. She threw open her car door and stood underneath her umbrella for a second, taking in the mammoth house. "Are you a Kennedy?"

Jefferson glanced up at the mansion with an unreadable expression on his face before opening the back door of the car and grabbing some of Alice's bags. "Money doesn't always buy happiness."

She rolled her eyes, juggling the umbrella into the crook of her arm to help him with her bags. "Whoever said _that_ clearly didn't have enough of the stuff."

They hurried through the rain; up the steps. Jefferson opened the front door to reveal an enormous entrance hall with a floor of marble tiles.

"How old is this place?" Alice asked, setting her dripping bags on the ground and shrugging out of her coat.

"Something like twenty eight years."

She made a face, brushing her fingertips over a painting of Escher's Staircase. _Everything is connected. _"Same age as me, then." She looked at him looking at her. "What?"

He shrugged and shut the door. Somehow there was still a chill.

"Nothing."

* * *

There were no clocks in Jefferson's house; if there ever had been, he had broken them all by now.

Clocks were inevitably a reminder of Time; that annoying, niggly little thing he'd been trying to forget. They were a reminder of transience, of the linear irreversibility of history…that no matter how much he wanted to, he could never change that one moment, that _one _decision in which he had lost his daughter forever. Whatever he did he couldn't change that moment…he couldn't get his Grace back…he had left her. She was gone. If he was ever going to see her face again, he had to get back – Time had to stop. Because each second; every heartbeat was another lifetime with out her. He had to make the hat to erase all those moments he regretted. He had to get back to his world - his reality - his past – his Grace.

How ironic then, that of all the people in Storybrooke, it was _Alice _he was showing round his house now. The one reminder of this world's reality. The one person in the whole God damned town that Time had touched – who had actually aged.

He wanted to smash something, to laugh. _Alice_, he chanted in his head, over and over, _Alice, Alice, Alice. _

Why was he doing this? It was inexplicable.

_Would Rose be mad? _

Jefferson knew when his wife was there and she wasn't there now. He waited for a sign of her as Alice followed him down dusky corridors, but there was none. _Where are you Rose?_

He checked his pocket watch; the only comfort left for him in this world. Still stuck on the same time and date it had been for the last thirty eight years. He almost let out a sigh of relief. Almost.

He glanced at Alice behind him – the person whose footsteps were very real, whose breath on the back of his neck was genuine. He'd half-expected her to burst into flames the moment she stepped through the door, for a knife to come racing for her heart.

But no. That wasn't one of the rules. Rose couldn't do that.

He'd been watching too many of this world's horror movies.

"What's in here?"

Alice was touching a door, ready to push it open. Jefferson had been too busy looking out for Rose to notice what room she was trying to get into.

He stepped forward and wrapped his hand over hers very quickly. His heart was in his throat. "You can't go in there."

"If this is your Red Room of Swedish dominatrix hard core porn, I think I can handle it," Alice said, dryly. She moved to open the door again but Jefferson gripped her hand over the handle harder.

"I said you can't go in there."

"And I'm taking that as an invitation."

She shook his hand off and forced her way into the room before he could stop her.

Inside, the alchemy of dusk had turned leaden greys into eerie silvers and corners into dark shadows.

Jefferson knew every contour and surface of the room, and he watched and waited as Alice's eyes adjusted to the darkness so she could see everything for what it really was.

The glow from the lighting underneath the wall of hats was bathing half her face in moonlight-white and she walked over and stood in front of the shelves of hats for a long time.

Eventually she picked one up and turned it about in her fingers a few times before turning back to Jefferson and placing it on his head. She stepped back a few paces, as if taking in an expensive piece of art work.

"You're the Mad Hatter," she said, eventually.

"Yes."

"And I'm Alice in Wonderland."

The scar around his neck was itching. He took the hat off.

Alice was staring at him, her eyes all pupil; monitoring effect and reaction. "If you know who you are, then am I –" she broke off and swallowed, looking around. "Am I an amnesiac?"

He sat down at the desk and kicked his legs up onto the table, examining a pair of fabric scissors. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

He was wound tight. He was worried she'd scared off Rose.

She'd forced her way into his secret room.

Suddenly, he wanted her out.

_Where are you Rose?_

He leant forward in his seat. "What can you stand to win on a coin toss?"

She blinked, folded her arms. "What kind of question is that?"

"It's a riddle."

"...I guess it depends on what you're betting."

"Not much of an answer."

"It's not much of a riddle."

He sighed and stood up, gesturing for her to leave the room with the fabric scissors. "Everything. You can win or lose everything. Let's go, this isn't a safari."

She gave him a long, searching look but walked out of the room after a few seconds. He set the scissors back down on the table carefully and followed her out, shutting the door behind him.

* * *

Later that night, Alice stood slouched against a pillar on the back porch of Jefferson's house and watched the twinkling lights of Storybrooke below. A cup of tea sat half full on the banister in front of her; she was smoking another cigarette. She really ought to cut back.

Her thoughts ran from Regina and the newspaper report, to Jefferson and his room, to her newly discovered identity and to the brown paper envelope she'd stashed in one of her bags upstairs. _Alice Lidell reinstated to hospital for emergency psychiatric treatment. _Clumsy and obvious; but effective.

She tried to remember what it was like to not walk round with a knot in her gut. She missed her house, Dinah and Mary Margaret and Marian. Being out here, so far away was…lonely. And of course, there was the stress of trying to figure out Jefferson's mood swings and ignore his ever watchful gaze.

She knew he was there, standing in the shadows at the end of the porch. He'd been for a walk out in the woods, but he was here now.

Out of the corner of her eye she admired the patterned shirt, the elegant cravat, the dim silhouette as he stood with his hands in his pockets. Did he know she could see him watching her? Did he care?

A little shiver of fear ran up Alice's spine that had nothing to do with the cold of the night. _Who are you living with, Alice?_

"I know you're there," she called out. Her voice was calm and level but the hand holding her cigarette was shaking. It was almost too minute too notice. Good.

Jefferson moved out of the shadows and approached her. There was something strangely intense about him, even when he moved. "Those things'll kill you, you know" he said, leaning against the pillar opposite hers.

She gave him a disparaging look. "Original."

"It's true."

They were both quiet, watching the beautiful and silent town off in the distance.

_Ask him about the curse, _Alice thought. _The worst he can do is say no. _

Wind rustled through the trees.

_Say it_.

What came out instead, however, was completely the dark horse. "I'd quit, actually," she said, surprising even herself. "After I'd broken up with my boyfriend four years ago. I wanted my life back, I wanted –" she paused, took a drag and blew out a precise, steady line of smoke, -"complete control. I began running every day, eating…ridiculously healthy…"

"You're smoking again now, though," Jefferson pointed out. His brows were lowered into a frown; he was looking at Alice differently.

"Being put in a cell that you thought you were never going to come out of will do things to your self control."

His face tightened and he nodded slowly. "…how long do you think you're going to stay here?"

"Until the Mayor stops trying to imprison me."

"Never, then."

It could have been funny if the situation weren't so serious.

She sighed, drained her mug of tea and then used it to stub out her cigarette. "There is something I can do," she admitted. The shadows seemed to prick up their ears. "Not _me_, specifically, but –"

"What?"

She gave him another long look. _Why so eager to get rid of me, Hatter? _Ever since she'd arrived in his house he'd been edgy, and it was beginning to creep the hell out of her.

"Regina made damn sure I couldn't be the one to file a court case against her, but that doesn't mean someone else couldn't."

He raised an eyebrow. "Emma?"

"No," Alice murmured. "Emma has Henry and that makes her liable to blackmail…I was thinking Mary Margaret." Even saying it out loud made her feel sick. It was putting her best friend in the line of fire so that she could buy her freedom.

"Do whatever you have to do," Jefferson said, his voice touched with ice. "Regina deserves everything she gets."

Alice watched as he fished around for his pocket watch and checked it compulsively once again. She filed the instinctive gesture away in her memory. How many times had he looked at that watch now since she'd been here? Ten times? Twenty?

She ran her finger round the rim of her mug.

_Alice Liddell_, she self-analyzed: _just desperate enough to hole-up in the middle of nowhere with a crazy man, and not desperate enough to trust him. Too much of a coward to face Regina alone - not enough of a coward to accept her fate and role over like a good doggy._

Her finger completed its fifth rotation of the mugs circumference. Fir tree moonshadows disturbed the lawn.

_Selfish enough to let her friend do the hard work for her? _

* * *

Mary Margaret poured some olive oil into a big frying pan, chopped up the garlic, mushrooms and chili peppers, and sprinkled some basil. She folded a dash of cream in with the eggs; mashed up the anchovies from the fridge that were nearing sell-by date. There was granary bread, so she lightly browned that in the toaster, too.

Emma wasn't home from work yet, but her mind was too preoccupied to notice if the apartment felt lonely or empty with out her.

"Shoot," she muttered. She'd dropped the salad bowl; it had shattered into a mosaic of randomly sized pieces on the floor.

_Alice_.

The phone rang before she could start clearing the mess up.

"Mary Margaret?" offered a voice from the black gulf when she unhooked the receiver.

"Yes?"

"It's me - it's Alice."

It was a good thing Mary Margaret hadn't been holding another salad bowl. She fumbled with the receiver; feeling light and heavy and world-weary all at the same time.

"It's seven o'clock. You promised you would come back after you went out with Emma!"

"Well, I can phone back later." Her voice was strangely comforting – dry and serious and teasing all at the same time.

"Like hell you will," Mary Margaret scolded. "What's going on?"

"I'm assuming you read the newspaper?"

Her eyes traveled to the _Daily Mirror _that was lying on the kitchen table. "Yeah, I saw that. Regina's got some nerve trying to lock you up –" she paused deliberately, waiting for Alice to give an explanation, but she was characteristically and annoyingly tightfisted with details. Mary Margaret sighed. "Emma said you went into hiding," she prodded.

"I am."

"You know you could have stayed with me…"

Alice's voice was soft, apologetic. "It would have been too obvious."

"Are you safe, at least?"

The broken static on the line was answer enough. Mary Margaret ran a hand through her hair. "I've been so worried about you."

More silence.

"Are you still there? I haven't lost you?"

"I'm still here," Alice confirmed, quietly. There was something off about her voice.

_She's scared_.

"…listen," she said, haltingly, "there might be a way we can stop Regina…once and for all."

Despite herself, Mary Margaret felt a small, disbelieving smile cross her face. She shook her head. "Alice, I'm taken aback that you can still take me aback."

"I'm serious."

"And I picked up on the operative use of _we_."

"I'm sorry that I'm dragging you into this."

"And I'm sorry that you didn't earlier – what's the plan?"

* * *

Hours after her escape from the town, Alice was striding back through it again.

The rain had stopped, but she kept the hood of her coat up to shadow her face. If it looked suspicious, there wasn't much she could do about it.

Granny's Diner would have been too crowded; Mary Margaret's apartment, doubtlessly, was being watched – she made her way to The Rabbit Hole.

Unsurprisingly, Mary Margaret was already there when Alice arrived. She was hunched absentmindedly over the bar, with a couple of inches of rum and coke still left in her glass.

Her eyes lit up the moment she spotted Alice and she moved to stand but Alice shook her head imperceptibly. She slipped onto the bar stool next to her friend and ordered a drink. "Don't make a scene," she said, quietly.

"You're acting like a fugitive!" Mary Margaret murmured back, almost accusingly.

"Technically, because I am one." Alice took a pull from her beer and set it down - then rummaged round in her coat pocket for a second before withdrawing an A4 brown envelope, folded down the middle. She pushed it across the bar towards Mary Margaret. "Insurance against collateral damage for you."

Mary Margaret took the envelope, raising an eyebrow.

"It's all the evidence I collected over the years of anything Regina did that was illegal or even slightly sketchy. Robert, Marian and Judge Mitchell are all on standby for a court case, they just needed the evidence."

"Why can't you use this?"

A small smile touched Alice's lips. "I don't know if you've noticed but recently my credibility as a lawyer and a sane person just dug its own grave and lay down in it to die."

Mary Margaret pressed her lips together, looking upset. Alice sensed that she wanted to say something, or that she had been putting something off ever since she had arrived. She waited patiently; finishing her beer and raising her hand for another as Mary Margaret fingered the envelope next to her in a preoccupied kind of way.

"I've got to tell you something," she said, finally. "But first you've got to swear you won't get mad."

"I won't. Shoot."

"Emma's been tailing you."

Alice choked on her drink and forgot to keep her voice down. "_Excuse me?_"

"You lied to her about how you got out of the cell!"

"So she went Sherlock Holmes on me?!"

Alice didn't know whether to relieved, reassured, impressed, exasperated or angry. She thought she might be all five.

"Alice, she said that the CCTV footage of your cell the night you got out was wiped of the thirty seconds you escaped in. The whole day, no stranger went in or out of your ward. She said your cell was locked from the _outside_ –"

"My, Emma made this sound like one hell of a magic trick," Alice muttered ironically, taking another swig of her drink. She stood from her seat; reflex defensive mechanism. "I have to go."

"No," snapped Mary Margaret, storming after her. "You do _not _just get to walk out of my life again – I'm not going to sit around waiting for a call that I might not ever get from you."

Alice's pace quickened. She was out of the Rabbit Hole, the cold night air hitting her like a slap. "Drop it," she threw back over her shoulder to her friend, through gritted teeth. She was almost running. No, she _was _running. Her hands were stuffed deep into her coat pockets; her heels were making a staccato tap on the sidewalk.

"_Alice_!" Mary Margaret raced after her; grabbed her wrist, pulling her to a stop. "Why won't you just tell me?"

She whirled round, her voice like whiplash. "Because _I can't,_ okay?"

They both stood, panting slightly, breath fogging the air; watching the distance between them visibly widen though neither of them had moved.

"I'm sorry," said Mary Margaret, "I just…I've just got a bad feeling about all this."

"Well I've got a good one," lied Alice. "So we ought to balance out."

"I hope so."

She scuffed a foot on the ground, looking down at the floor. "Don't call me except from a payphone."

"I won't."

Alice felt something on her face. She reached up and scrubbed at her cheek – Jesus Christ was she _crying_?!

Mary Margaret covered the distance between them in two strides, throwing her arms round her. Alice could feel the envelope scrunched up in her hand behind her neck. "Everything's going to be okay," Mary Margaret promised quietly, as Alice struggled to pull herself together. "We're going to stop Regina. Together." She hugged Alice a little more tightly. "It's okay, you've got me now. I'm here."

* * *

**A/N **So **Debbie93 **asked for more Mary Margaret/Alice moments, and I ended up writing two whole scenes and morphing a little of the plot just to create them – I couldn't be happier that I did it now.

I hope you guys all like this chapter – there are a lot of different things going on and I'm a bit nervous about posting it.

Please **review**, and thank you to all those that previously have. They put a smile on my face!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	11. Chapter 10

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 10**

* * *

"Alice Liddell was just spotted down in town tonight – thought you might want to know."

Regina dropped her copy of the _Daily Mirror _onto her desk as territorial jealousy flared up inside of her. "How the hell did you get into my house?"

"I have my ways." Mr Gold helped himself to a tumbler of whisky and settled down in the chair across the table from Regina's, both hands rested comfortably atop his cane. "Just like you have yours."

"What do you want?"

"Tit for tat, dearie. You've been poking your nose into all our business for so many years; I decided it was time to do the same. What do you want with Miss Liddell?"

Regina smiled, leaning back in her chair and resting her arms lightly on the upholstery. "Because I feel we've grown so close, Gold, I'll tell you: she's a threat to me. I need to eliminate her."

"Yet I seem to have a distinct memory of her being fired." He leant forward in his seat, the corner of his mouth lifting into a slight sneer. "And you keep going for the girl like a dog with a bone. What's this _really_ about, Mayor?"

She didn't reply, crushing a piece of paper into a compact ball in one hand. _"Power," _her mother had once said to her. _"How do some obtain it, and others live and die as livestock, as sheep? Why do only a select few rise above the rest? First: It is the individual's _desire_ for power. Secondly: the sacrifice they make for it, and third, my dear: the ability to accrue power, to maintain it and nurture it where the majority of the minority lose and mishandle and eschew it through their weaknesses: their addiction, their desire and their greed. Power is not just measured by what we do with it in the short time we have it: it's how long we manage to consolidate it for._

"If you must know," she said, after a split decision, "my mother wants her."

"Cora – but how –" His gaze flickered to the mirror hanging on the wall. "Ah, that's right, I forgot that you and your mother communicated like pre-civilization cave men: smoke signals and mirrors."

"Save it," Regina snapped. She moved from her seat to stand in front of the window, her arms firmly folded. Storybrooke was lying out in front of her like an unfurled map. Twenty eight years she had been in this town – by her mother's own definition it should have garnered her all the happiness she could ever want.

But all Regina's mother had taught her had been lies and poison. After twenty eight years, all Regina had found that truly made her happy was Henry. "It's not what you think," she said, eventually. "I'm trying to keep the girl out of her hands. I'm trying to keep Alice from Wonderland."

"How poetic." In her peripheral, she saw Gold approach to stand at the window next to her. He leant on his cane as he watched her. Regina kept her gaze determinedly fixed on the frosted dark glass in front of her. "Forgive me if I don't believe that you're changing and evolving into a woman capable of redemption and kindness: you're trying to bar the girl up in a cell for the rest of her lifetime, which – as you noticed last time, dear, - didn't exactly work."

Her lips curled into a wordless snarl as she turned to face him, jabbing a finger into his shoulder. "Whatever my mother's planning? – whatever she wants with that girl? – it's not going to bode well for any of us. It doesn't matter about the pretexts, or the method, it matters about the result and how this all ends – and in the end, _I'll_ be the one to save us, and you'll all be thanking me for locking that girl away somewhere where that damn rabbit couldn't get to her."

Mr Gold leant forwards. "I know how your mind works, Regina. This isn't for us – this is for you. And just you alone."

"_You're _picking holes in _my _integrity?"

"And why should I believe –"

Regina laughed and strode away from him to perch on the corner of her desk. "Then I'll phrase this differently. Use logic, Mr Gold" she said, picking a blood-red apple up from the bowl on the table and balancing it on her palm. "If I'm lying, you'll be safe in Storybrooke with your money and your estate. If I'm not lying, we're going to be hearing from my mother very shortly."

"The part of hero doesn't suit you well, dear."

"This isn't heroism. I'm not Snow White. This is a score I've been meaning to settle with mother dearest for a long time now."

_Well, well_, thought Gold, _Regina Mills – the feared, renowned Evil Queen. I knew you were more than just a pretty face. _

Blue and red lights flashed through the curtains and Gold shifted the fabric with his cane to look out. A police car had pulled up outside the house.

"What is this?" Regina asked, sharply, striding over to the window to see Emma and Graham approach the house. "Why are they here?"

"I assure you I have just as little idea as you do."

She ran downstairs; leant over the handrail to stare down to the hall.

Graham had a key; the door was forced open. "What do you think your doing?! –" she yelled.

"You're under arrest." Emma looked up at her breathlessly, a hint of triumph sparking in her eyes as she strode into the hallway.

"Under whose authority?!"

"Mine." Emma held up a brown envelope. "You don't control this town anymore, Mayor Mills."

Regina's hand clutched the banister a little more tightly.

_Maybe the future isn't determined by fate or metaphysics or pre-determined events. Maybe your path changes course simply by shifts in power._

She looked up. On the landing above and opposite, looking down on her was Gold; invisible to Emma Swan's eyes. His gaze met hers.

_My mother cannot win_.

"You see me as an enemy," she said up to him - intensity and desperation bled into her words - "I can live with that: enemies and friends are defined by context. Understand that you want to be on my side of this before it's too late." Emma was climbing the stairs, any closer and she'd be within hearing distance. "Find Alice Liddell."

His eyes penetrated her. Emma Swan grabbed Regina roughly by the arm and suddenly there was the uncomfortable, metallic feeling of handcuffs being strapped round her wrists.

She looked up at him. Almost desperate. _Your word, Gold. _

His expression was unreadable for several seconds and then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. The gesture surprised Regina, in more ways than one – it felt formal, final and intimate.

"What are you looking at?" Emma followed her gaze suspiciously to the landing.

It was empty.

"Nothing," Regina said, allowing herself to be led out of her own house and out to the car.

* * *

They pulled off the sidewalk and drove back into Storybrooke.

"What makes you think you can get away with arresting me?" Regina snapped from the back of the police cruiser.

She saw Graham clutch the steering wheel a little tighter. Emma turned round in her seat. "Here's the deal, Mayor Mills. A lot of people kiss your ass around here, and if I thought it would get Alice free, I would have, too. But I'm not, so listen really good: before Alice went into hiding, she gave Mary Margaret an envelope of evidence that could be used against you in court. It's going to send you to jail for a very long time, where you won't be able to threaten anyone ever again."

Something in Regina's heart twisted and severed. "You can't take me out of Henry's life," she said, her voice thick. "I'm his mother."

They rode along in silence. After a while Emma said: "I'm sorry it had to come to this, but it's your own fault."

_You have no idea what you've just done, Miss Swan. _

Regina bit the inside of her cheek and stared out of the window into the night. The streets were filled with shadows and brightness and silence and phone-lines and a few drunken couples. What was it she'd said to Alice Liddell?

_You'll see the irony of all this in time._

Regina closed her eyes. History had a way of coming back round and biting you on the ass.

* * *

Jefferson woke abruptly from his nightmare, panting and sweating. He lay there, looking up at the ceiling for a moment, the raw light of the hallway light slipping into the bedroom through the crack underneath the door and bathing it in a cool, grey glow. Like a winter moon.

He got his breathing back under control and turned onto his side.

Rose was staring seriously back at him, head propped up by one hand, a halo of red-gold hair round her head. _Go back to sleep. _

She reached forwards and he closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the memory of the feeling as she pushed his hair back out of his eyes.

_Go back to sleep_.

There was a scuffle outside his door. He tensed. There was never noise in the house.

Rose watched him role out of bed and he walked to the door quickly, purposefully, silently.

Out in the hall, he slammed a shadowy figure up against the wall, bracing his forearm up against their throat.

"Hey!"

Alice. He didn't remove the arm partially blocking off her oxygen. "Where the hell have you been?" he hissed. "Night time stroll?"

"I went for a drink."

He smirked and pressed his forearm in further.

"_I went for a drink_," Alice repeated, her voice rasping through gritted teeth.

It was true, Jefferson realized. He could smell the sour scent of alcohol on her breath. He took a step back. "Are you as stupid as you look?"

"Clearly," Alice muttered, regaining her balance somewhat unsteadily. She went into her still unused bedroom and began to search through clothing.

He stood in the doorway. "You could have been taken."

"Well I wasn't, so don't go slobbering," she said, walking back over and shutting the door on him with a supercilious flick of her wrist. He grit his teeth and found himself seeing her undressing in his minds eye, that black dress pooled round her ankles, the white T Shirt stretching as she pulled it over her head. "I'm not," he called through the door. "How many drinks did you have?"

He wasn't sure how to handle a severely drunk woman.

"Not many, I just said that to get you stirred up." She re-opened the door abruptly and there she was again, less than a few centimeters away from him; invading his home, his personal space, his secrets and his life. "I gave Mary Margaret the evidence."

"So Regina's - ?"

"Yeah."

She was still giving him that look – that one that said she knew everything there possibly was to know about him. Her finger moved from rapping irritatingly on the wall to draw an imaginary line across her throat. "What the hell happened to your neck?"

Jefferson had forgotten he was wearing a night shirt that left his scar exposed. A private smile fluttered across his face as he thought of the double-meaning to his explanation: "Oh, that…I lost my head."

She took it how he thought she would. "Clearly, Crazy," she said smirking, and then her expression froze and her eyes widened. "You don't mean…you don't mean _literally, _do you?"

"I don't lie."

"Don't you, now?"

Her expression told him he'd just lost an important piece in a game of chess he hadn't even known he was playing. He hated mind games.

"No," he snapped.

"No? So what's the pocket watch for, Jefferson?"

"It's nothing. It's just a pocket watch."

She raised an eyebrow. "It's just a broken pocket watch that doesn't tell the right time? That you've been checking impulsively every five minutes since I got here? Just a pocket watch that you happen to carry round with you everywhere you go?"

He should have seen the intention on her face. Failing that, he should have known because he knew measurements. She was now only two centimeters away from him. That was about three quarters of an inch. It didn't leave any room for maneuvering or escape or reaction. Three quarters of an inch was all she had to reach for her fingertips to brush the face of his pocket watch that was hanging round his neck.

* * *

**A/N **Slightly shorter chapter here. I'm on a role with this story – I really hope you guys are appreciating the frequent, (for me) updating, and I hope you don't feel like I'm compensating quality with speedy chapters. I think, hopefully, this is still up to my usual standard.

Thank you once again to everyone who's reviewing. Please take time to review if you are reading this and haven't already left a comment. It really does make my day and it only takes a minute.

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	12. Chapter 11

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 11**

* * *

Suddenly, silently, disturbingly, there was a woman behind Jefferson. Alice stared for a moment, frozen, and then felt her brain kick into gear and her core sicken.

There was a strangled kind of gasp – her, she realized – and her fingers retracted violently from the pocket watch as if touching it had been enough to enact an electric charge.

The woman vanished.

Alice backed up. There was a ringing in her ears. "What –?"

"She's my wife."

"She's dead!"

Jefferson looked frustrated, angry. He ran a hand back through his hair. "You shouldn't have touched it," he muttered, feverishly. "Why did you touch it?" Alice was turning, walking away – running back towards her room. _Why did you touch it_? "- Alice!"

The light of an unseen moon was shadowing the corridor. Everything seemed eerie. Quiet.

When was it not quiet in this house?

Alice whirled back round. Her heart was beating a tattoo on the inside of her rib cage – so loud and so fierce that it took her breath away. The feeling that she'd had of being watched ever since she'd got into the house had tripled. At least now she knew why. "How…_the hell_ is this…is that even _possible_?"

"Magic."

Alice looked at Jefferson; imagined the woman standing behind him, hair flowing down her back, serious and devastatingly silent. It was odd, trying to see things that weren't there. Or were. Just unseen.

Jefferson walked towards her as if she were an animal he might frighten away. His words came out painfully – unwillingly. "My wife. She was a clockmakers daughter when I met her…she gave me the pocket watch so that I could carry a piece of her wherever I went. I was in another world when she died…I knew that she had because the clock stopped ticking, but the magic…" he paused. The moon had appeared from behind a cloud, swollen and pale and ill - light streaming in through the window at the end of the corridor like scrim lights in a theatre. "The magic kept her soul tied to the watch."

"How long ago did she die?"

The words dropped from his mouth like stones. "It's been thirty eight years."

"And she's been like that all this time?! Thirty eight years as a ghost? As _nothing_?"

It was Jefferson's turn to walk away. Alice hurried after him down the stairs, their footsteps reverberating round the quiet house. "You can't do that!" she yelled at his back. "You can't keep her alive as a shade! That's not how it works!"

"This has nothing to do with you," Jefferson muttered – inflections of deadened calm and darkness to his voice - stairs descending down below him like whorls of a shell. "Why do you even care?"

Alice stopped. "Because my parents died. And they were all I had in the world and I was alone and scared and it sucked - but I had to move on! I had to let them go."

"I love my wife."

She stood perfectly still and then something inside of her swelled up and burst. "You mean your wife that's been dead thirty eight years? That wife? The one that you keep telling yourself you're still living with in this big house all by yourself? Take off the pocket watch Jefferson – where would your wife be then, huh? You _loved _her. You loved her so much and now you can't let her go – and it's insane – "

His face went hard. He reached up the few steps to her and grabbed her forearm so tightly it hurt. "Get. Out."

"I would love to, but I can't," she spat. "I'm here, _stuck_, just like you."

He leaned in closer, sneering. "Then get out of my sight."

She wrenched her arm free of his grip and grabbed his hand, placing it over her rapidly beating heart. "In case you need reminding," she said, searching for something that would make him understand, "_this _is _real _life." Alice flung his hand back to him and shouldered him out of the way and then hurried back down the stairs. There was a resounding _bang _as she stormed out of the house, shutting the door violently behind her.

* * *

"Damn it, Jefferson," Alice muttered, leaning back against the door the moment she shut it. She closed her eyes for a brief second and then opened them again and fished round in her pocket for a cigarette. Her hand was shaking too much to light it and she gave up, flinging both lighter and cigarette off into the darkness.

_Relax_, she told herself, pressing her thumbs into her eyes. _Jesus Christ, just _relax_. _

It was almost pitch black, but she headed out to the woods anyway.

_I could handle all this stuff when I was just being stalked by the easter bunny. But this? _

She turned back and looked out to Storybrooke, a bristling smudge on a rose tinted horizon. _How did my life get to be this? _

She trekked out into the primeval forest for a few minutes, taking care not to trip on stray tree roots. It was cold. She sucked the fresh air into her lungs.

Alice tried not to let the sounds of the woods make her edgy. _Twig's snapping? _A fox. _Voices out in the night_? The wind. A cough?

Alice whirled round. _What the hell?_

There was the sound again. The distinct noise of someone clearing their throat.

"Who's there?" she called out.

"A friend."

A Cheshire cat appeared out of nowhere in mid-air in front of her. It rolled once onto its back, swimming through the air like a seal, and gave her an upside down-grin. "Just a friend."

"I should have known you weren't done with me."

"Smart girl," it complimented.

The cat flipped itself right way up, and Alice shifted on her feet warily. "So the rabbit – what – didn't do its job? You're the reinforcements?"

"You seem _nettled _tonight. Did the Hatter rub you up the wrong way? He does that, you know."

"A straight answer would be nice."

"Dear me, we're not in a good mood, are we?"

"Okay, yes, I had a fight with the Hatter." She waited. The cat did a somersault in the air. "Well?"

It floated towards her; she could have sworn it was raising its eyebrows. "Well what?"

"Are you going to tell me why you're all so desperate for me to come to Wonderland?"

"An _astute_ question. But why?"

"Why the question?"

"Yes, why the question."

"I guess I'd like a decent reason."

The cat nodded. "_That_, my dear, iswhy we want you to come to Wonderland."

_Mother fu- _Alice took a deep breath and tried to force calm. "Excuse me?" she asked, as politely as she could.

"_Reason_, my dear Alice. Wonderland is becoming _reasonable. _Wonderland, simply isn't Wonderland anymore."

Alice took several seconds to process this and then laughed. "And you came to _me _for help? Do you know who you're talking to?"

The moon shifted. Ferns nodded. The cat drifted around her in torrential silence. "Well, you're Alice," it said, examining her closely as if expecting some trick. "Aren't you?"

"Yeah: I'm neurotic, logical, narrow-minded, _astute_ Alice."

The cat pushed itself right up into her face, so that she almost has to go cross-eyed to see it. "You know, for an intelligent person, you're really very blind," it said.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" she asked, annoyed.

"Oh," said the cat, drifting away again and waving a paw airily. "Anything you want it to, I suppose – are you going to come with me to Wonderland or not?"

She blinked and then folded her arms. "No."

"I thought so," it said, matter of factly. "Time's running out though – you really ought to come with me."

"And why should I come with you?"

It shrugged. "Why does anyone do anything?" it asked, and vanished.

Alice stood, staring blankly into the distance for a second before grabbing a fallen branch and flinging it at the spot the cat had been in.

"_THAT'S NOT EVEN AN ANSWER!"_

* * *

When she opened her eyes, the fresh world of morning turned around her slowly and she folded upright abruptly.

Where the hell was she? In the woods?

No, she'd dragged herself home through the darkness after seeing the cat, and that was a ceiling above her head.

She blearily looked round her and a blanket shifted in her lap. She looked down; frowning, and then glanced at the couch she lay on.

It was Jefferson's living room.

Last night's smirking argument gave her a few moments of ignorant bliss before slamming back into her with full force. "_Fuck_," Alice muttered, rubbing a hand down her face. "There are no words for what a bitch you are, Alice."

She crept up to her bedroom. The house was silent – but then again, when was it not – the hairs on the back of her neck raised as she stole back down the corridor they'd stood in the previous night. Was Rose here now? It wasn't worth the stress it took to think about.

She got dressed, pulling on fresh underwear and a bra. There was a second when she realized this was the set Nick had got her before they broke up and she paused fractionally before shaking her head and grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt.

Her bladder felt like an inflatable camping bed so she searched round the house for the bathroom. It took three minutes because Jefferson's house was a maze, but eventually she found one.

Business done, Alice shoved male-toiletries aside to look at herself critically in the bathroom mirror.

…_Yeah: I'm neurotic, logical, narrow-minded, astute Alice... _

So often, the world wanted to type-cast and label. Half her life, hadn't she done things and acted like she had, simply because she thought it fit in with her 'young lawyer image'?

And hadn't living with Jefferson proved that that just wasn't the case: that there could be so much more roiling around under the skin's surface? You could be graceful and awkward; tough and vulnerable; crazy and sane. There was no either, or.

Somehow, the person staring back out of the mirror at her was a complete stranger. With out the environment, with out the context – who was Alice? What was she?

The things she thought of, in situations like these.

Alice walked back downstairs apprehensively. There was noise coming from the kitchen.

Jefferson was making tea, already dressed neatly in a dark waistcoat, shirt and cravat; a pointless gesture, seeing as Alice now knew what was underneath it. His movements were like clockwork, like a butler's.

He had his back to her, but Alice had a feeling he knew she was there. She sunk into a seat at the table and waited. _Say something, idiot. _

Jefferson wordlessly handed her a cup on a saucer. He didn't sit.

"Nice teacup," Alice said, taking it.

One of those smirks crossed his face; those ones that were completely devoid of humor and yet full of nothing but. "It fits in with the image." He leant back against the work top. "You slept on the sofa last night."

There wasn't much she could say to that. "So?"

"So there are fifteen unused bedrooms in this house."

_Fifteen_, Alice mouthed. "After last night's…incident…I figured I'd sleep on the couch." Her eyes flickered to the pocket watch round his neck. He tucked it underneath his shirt. "Fits the image, doesn't it?" she said, her voice devoid of any trace of irony.

"Of a lovers spat, maybe."

She winced. "That wasn't what I was going for, considering your dead wife's hanging round." She tapped a fingernail against her teacup. "I'm sorry I upset you so much."

He shook his head and laughed darkly. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Just get to the heart of things like that."

She leant back in her chair. "You know, I can retract the apology."

"It wouldn't change what you said, even if you did."

She searched his face for any traces of bitterness but found none. If he was angry, it was well concealed. "Did you put the blanket on me last night?"

"Yes." Jefferson walked round the kitchen, busying himself with toast and more tea. Mundane tasks didn't suit him well, Alice reflected. It was like shrugging on a coat that didn't fit. She moved to help him. "By the way," Jefferson said, pointing at her with a tea spoon. "How you sleep looks awkward as hell."

Alice raised an eyebrow, a real smile hovering about her mouth. "How do I sleep?"

"Sprawled out on your front with half your face mashed into the pillow. I thought you were going to suffocate and I pushed you onto your side but you just rolled back over again."

A laugh bubbled up and out of her lips.

They fell back into silence again and she looked out the window absently as she buttered up the toast. Yesterday's rain was gone, leaving a grey-washed sky in its place. A sea of pine trees rippled every now and then in the wind and the watery sun was reflected like a million broken shards of glass at Storybrooke harbor.

"You wouldn't think this world was what it was like, looking at it," Jefferson said.

Alice turned to him. He was staring out the window too, half frowning.

"What do you mean?"

"Cynical. Miserable."

Indignant annoyance stabbed through her briefly. "It's not that bad. Give me _one_ way – that's not attributed to the curse – in which this world sucks."

"No love at first sight."

"You're not serious?" She'd never pegged _Jefferson _for being a romanticist, but then she realized as she studied him that this wasn't being a romantic, this was a belief in fact. "It's because it's impossible."

"Believable," Jefferson objected.

"Okay," Alice said, readily taking up the challenge. "Love's based on knowledge, right? The little things. You love the way the person makes their eggs in the morning, the way they fold their shirts; the way they smile. Unless there's some, massive download of information the first time you clap eyes on 'The One', it can't be real. It's just because true love is such an easy sell. Can you honestly imagine the panic there would be in the Forest of Fairies, or wherever it was that you lived, if people found out that love-at-first-sight wasn't real? It sounds like you guys met a girl and then married them five days later. To find out that love was hard? That it took work and tears and years to build up? That's the hard sell."

"What is this world's problem with cynicism?"

"Oh _come on_."

He regarded her for a long time until his gaze was almost uncomfortable. "So you're telling me," he said, with a tone as if he were holding four aces, "that you never met someone and instantly felt something? That you've never looked and just _known _that there was something there. That, days and weeks after seeing them, they were constantly on your mind, every second of every day? You've never felt that?"

Alice's mouth worked like a goldfish for a second. She looked at him and then looked away.

She poured him some more tea.

* * *

Mr Gold searched Mary Margaret's apartment swiftly and adeptly.

He checked the inside of the toilet cistern; under the mattress for slits; the carpets, for loose flaps; both her and Emma Swan's wardrobes; bookshelves and behind and in the books themselves. The envelope could have been folded down to almost a forth of its size.

He'd been there two hours and still hadn't found it, but Gold wasn't an idiot, he knew Miss Blanchard could be keeping it elsewhere until the court hearing.

He probed the recesses of Emma Swan's travel bag, but found nothing except an old magazine and two dollars in coin shrapnel. He picked up a picture of the two women from the breakfast bar and gazed at it intently. Emma Swan did look uncannily like Alice Liddell. That would be another thing that would have to be looked into once all this was over.

He began to search once more. His back was aching, and his foot was paining him worse than ever in the cold weather. _You know Regina, and you know Cora, _he told himself,_ the bitch could always be lying, but you can't risk Cora showing up here._

The door handle turned. Gold looked up, realized there was no means of escape and settled into a chair at the table – sighing in relief as his left foot was relieved of all weight.

"His name's David Nolan – he's a coma patient that I – "

Mary Margaret was half way through the door when she noticed Mr Gold. Emma Swan took a few seconds longer, entering behind the dark haired woman. "What -?"

"Gold," Mary Margaret greeted him, her voice flat. "What are you doing here?"

"He's looking for the evidence against Regina," said Emma, pushing past the other woman to get more fully into the room. "Aren't you?"

Mr Gold settled back into his chair. "…I guess you caught me red handed."

The blonde haired woman showed her anger by slamming the door shut behind her loudly. Mary Margaret dropped her bag from her shoulder onto the kitchen counter. "So you're working with Regina now?"

"So to speak. We have a…common goal, shall we say."

Mary Margaret folded her arms, shaking her head. Off to their right a grandfather clock's pendulum grated like a spade digging far below. "Is this plain talking? Because I don't understand what I'm hearing."

"Then I'll phrase this differently, Miss Blanchard. You sent Regina Mills to jail with the evidence Alice Liddell left you – I want the mayor _out _of that jail cell so Alice Liddell can go _in_ it. However I coerce you, or her, I will do this. Am I talking plainly enough for you now?"

"And how exactly are you planning to "coerce" me?"

Gold's eyes shifted to Emma Swan. "Maybe by kidnapping Miss Swan's boy and locking him in a concrete box until you give me the whereabouts of Alice Liddell or that envelope," he leant forward in his chair, "…in cases like these - I'm not fussy."

"Threatning the Sheriff?" Emma bit out, placing a reassuring hand on her friend's arm as Mary Margaret shot her a look. "_Bad _move."

Gold ignored her and got to his feet and limped over to the doorway, leaning heavily onto his cane. _The world around you sees a cripple. It can take one chance meeting to prove them wrong. _"Quite an apartment you've both got here." He touched the wallpaper by the door almost experimentally and turned back to face the two woman. "I won't be asking for Alice Liddell's whereabouts or that envelope many more times again. Before I next return…you should probably ask yourselves how much you're willing to lose - and for whom. The outcome of this will only end one way," he looked at both of them individually. "…but then again, I think you already know that."

* * *

**A/N **Firstly: thank you for all your lovely reviews. This story is so much fun to write, but it's been made twice as fun because I get to read all your responses and thoughts on each chapter as everything progresses – it's one of the best things about writing on this site.

**Converselover20204 **asked if this fic would be mainly AU, and I think several other people have made comments on canon/original plot line parallels. Obviously, I can't give too much away here, but the story will stay generally as it is now: with the background context being canon, and foreground plot detail being an original line.

I'm completely thrilled that you guys are enjoying this – thank you for reading and supporting me.

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	13. Chapter 12

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 12**

* * *

Regina lay in her cell, bored. The minutes dragged themselves along like a shot Hollywood gangster.

She was not afraid, but she did feel mild irritation – and worry. She had been having unpleasant fantasies about never seeing Henry again; about Gold retracting his word, leaving her to rot in jail for the rest of her years. She detested this helplessness.

No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something to pass the time and to distract herself from the situation she was in, that little bit of fear kept trickling out. It seeped through her veins, chilled and sharp, threatening to poison her.

She had long since discovered the best way of keeping fear like this at bay was to fantasize about something that gave her strength so she closed her eyes and conjured up the memory of her wedding night.

"…_because I'm your mother, and I know best."…The words sunk in. Rage ignited in her like a lit match. The flame blazed up; magic filled her. Everything her mother had ever thought or felt or loved ceased to have a future in this world as she sent her flying back into the looking glass…_

There was the sound of footsteps and Graham entered the room. Regina opened her eyes and swung her legs over the side of the uncomfortable wooden bed and walked up to the bars.

"Graham, please," she begged, "why are you doing this to me?"

His emotions were always so visible. He could never hide them. "You know why." He hesitated and changed the course of his path at his desk and walked over to her. "You don't get to hurt people anymore. You don't get to manipulate them. You don't get to toy with their emotions."

Regina felt the backs of her eyes prick with tears. Good. She allowed her them to well up. "I don't understand. Is this about us? Graham, you know I would _never_ hurt you –"

"-You know you're not going to get out, don't you?"

Regina faltered. She stepped away from the bars.

"Don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Graham laughed with out humor and shook his head, placing his hands on his hips. She ran her eyes over his profile deliberately – he was attractive – it was a shame he was so…malleable "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Don't pretend that every word that comes out of your mouth isn't you trying to manipulate me. I'm not interested in your bullshit. Just tell me what you want. Just…for _once _in your life, be straight with me."

Regina bit down on the inside of her cheek. What did she want? "I want my phone call."

Graham hesitated. Caved. She'd seen it all before. So had he.

He took out the keys and opened the door to her cell and led her over to the desk. He handed her the phone. "Three minutes," he warned.

Regina dialed Mr Gold's number and listened to the ring for a long time. Finally he answered.

"It's Regina."

"It's been a day, dearie, you're going to have to give me longer to find her than that."

"I didn't expect you to have already found her – and don't you dare hang up the phone." She waited, experimentally. There was silence and a faint crackle of static but she could sense Gold waiting and listening on the other end.

"Nobody disappears in this town," she continued, "it's impossible."

"I'm aware…listen, if you've phoned me to hypothesize about her whereabouts…"

"She's hiding with someone, she has to be."

"With all due respect, Mayor, I highly doubt she's in someone's living room sipping a cup of tea right now."

_Two minutes, _Graham mouthed to her.

Electrons whirred in Regina's brain, carrying impulses, changing thoughts, dropping off a realization. Her hand curled more tightly round the receiver. She stared up into Graham's hazel eyes, aware of his listening suspiciously to her every word.

"Actually," she said, her voice weighted down with the past, "I think that's exactly what she's doing…Gold, it's time you paid an old business partner a visit."

There was a long silence of understanding on the other end, and then dial tone: an eternity.

She took the phone away from her ear and clenched her jaw.

_Jefferson. You look smart, but deep down your dumb, and predictable and weak and this isn't going to end well for you and I think you know it. _

Graham held out his hand for the phone, but Regina curled it into her chest protectively. "One more call," she demanded.

"That's not the law.'

Regina felt her heart clench slightly. Everybody had a weakness. "You gave me three minutes," she said, trying to keep her voice level, "I have a minute left: just let me use it to hear my son's voice."

* * *

There was a sad story about Jefferson; Alice realized that day when she asked him about the telescope. He had a daughter called Grace – now Paige - who he'd been tricked into leaving by the Evil Queen. The guilt had turned him mad.

Alice tried to imagine living her life when the well-being of a child would be balanced precariously atop every decision she made. Weird, she thought, staring down the telescope at a strawberry-blonde haired girl playing the piano in a nearby house, when she was younger she always figured that kids were an inevitable part of getting old. She thought that you'd wake up one morning and there they'd be, diapers bulging. But no, you actually had to make your mind up to have them, like buying a house or deciding to get engaged.

She straightened and looked at Jefferson who was staring broodingly down at the daughter he'd loved and lost. She was twenty eight years old now. What if she never made her mind up about wanting kids? What if it was too late for her by the time she _did _settle down?

Alice looked at Grace again. The little sprog was banging the piano keys in annoyance as she messed up an arpeggio. She felt her heart physically ache. Suddenly, she wanted to grab the little girl and shake her and make her remember and reunite her with Jefferson, right then, right now.

_All children deserve parents that love them_.

"You'll get her back, one day." Alice said, suddenly. "Fate works like that."

Jefferson never took his eyes off his daughter as he spoke. He stared at her like a man dying of thirst, drinking in each change in her expression, each word that she had said that he couldn't hear – another moment that he had missed. "I left her. I gave her up – that was _my _decision, _my _fault –" Alice touched his arm, silencing him. He looked at her, his expression both intense and broken. "What would you do, if someone took your child away from you?"

Alice watched a mental image of a small boy with his mother's blonde hair and his father's grey eyes being ripped away from her grasp. Gone. Forever. Her heart broke as she stared her virtual future in the face. "If someone took my child away from me," she said, slowly, "I would kill them."

"I should have killed Regina."

"You don't have it in you," she said, softly. "You're not a killer."

Something in his expression challenged her; _and you are? _

They stayed like that for a long time, just simply watching one another; both trying to understand the person next to them, when there was the distant echo of a knock on the door.

"I'll go," Jefferson said. Alice followed him anyway – when he opened the door, she wished she hadn't.

There were dim noises out on the nearby road. A motorcycle. A truck. Jefferson's shoulders stiffened and he moved to slam the door shut but Mr Gold jammed it with his cane. "Shutting the door in my face? Not a way to get on my good side."

"You don't have a good side," Jefferson sneered. "What do you want?"

"A cup of tea and a chat." Gold brushed a piece of hair out his face and attempted to look over Jefferson's shoulder further into the house. He moved to block his view. "Oh, and the girl."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Alice backed up as quietly as she could in the hallway. Her heart was beating so fast she thought she might choke on it.

She was poised to run – where? Out into the woods? Hole herself up in a wardrobe?

"…I think we both know that she's here, Jefferson…"

Alice tiptoed up the stairs. The fifth step creaked.

In Jefferson's room she reached through the rip in the underside of the bedframe – thank you, Jesus! – his hiding spots weren't as good as he thought they were. She untaped the loaded revolver. Guns were heavier than they looked, and colder.

She left the room and ran back down the corridor softly and shut herself into the room with the telescope.

It was eerily quiet. The hats on the wall mocked her. _How desperate are you, Alice? _

She crouched down in the corner where she had a clear view of the door and the rest of the room. She leant her head back against the wall.

_You are not going back into that cell_, she told herself. _That's not your life_.

She wondered if that was her choice.

Alice listened carefully and felt her stomach dissolve to air when she heard male voices in the house. Why was Gold inside? Why hadn't Jefferson gotten rid of him?

Footsteps vibrated the planks out in the corridor and she jumped and slid to her feet. Jefferson opened the door to the room and he turned and looked at her and found himself staring straight into the eye of the gun.

"What the hell have you done?" Alice asked, voice shaking, face white.

He held up his hands, as if trying to placate a wild animal. "He wants to explain –"

"To you? About where they're going to take me?"

"No. To you. About Wonderland. There are thing's you don't understand, Alice. Thing's _I _didn't understand. This is bigger than we thought, than we know – than _he_ knows."

Alice flicked the safety off. She had a gun. He didn't. "You do realize everything that everyone's doing is just driving me closer to Wonderland, don't you?"

His face lost its composure and then regained it. "You don't want to go to Wonderland, Alice. Trust me on this."

Her ears were ringing. She was – literally - backed into a wall. She stepped away from it, keeping the gun trained on his chest. "What did he promise you to get in, huh? You're daughter? Her safety?"

"Put down the gun."

"I trusted you."

He dived forward, knocking her onto her back. She was winded enough that he managed to force the weapon out of her grip, holding it in his right hand whilst he straddled her, pinning her down with his left hand where her collar bones met.

Alice stared up at him, her face contorting into rage and disbelief. "You _bastard_."

She tried to head butt him, but he moved out of the way in time.

"Trust me again now," he grit out, panting as he tried to hold her struggling form down.

"He's going to take me away! He knows where I am now you _imbecile_!"

Jefferson didn't say yes, didn't say no. "Just listen to what he has to say." Alice's eyes went wide as he pulled up her jumper and she felt the cool flatness of his hand against the hot skin of her stomach. He tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans and then pulled her top back down to cover it. He looked her in the eye. "No-one's going to take you." This time, it felt like a promise.

She allowed him to lead her back downstairs and into the sitting room. You could see everything you needed to know about Jefferson in that room: the piano, the mad wallpaper, the sketchbooks filled with drawings of other worlds and maps, a TV Alice had never seen him use and two figurines on the mantelpiece that looked like miniature versions of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.

Mr Gold put the one he had been holding up at eye-level to examine back down and turned to Alice. "Good afternoon, Miss Liddell," he said, smiling. "Quite a hiding-place you found yourself here – it's a shame you can't stay longer."

The three of them positioned themselves in a triangulated formation round the room. Mr Gold sat on the sofa, Alice was in the armchair and Jefferson was standing, hovering by the piano.

"Who are you?" Alice asked, folding her arms.

"And here I was, hoping that staying with him hadn't driven you mad."

"No. I mean, who are you?" Her voice juddered with the implausibility of it all. "Everyone in this town's got some kind of second, fairytale identity, right?"

He leant forward, smirking. "Let's just say I'm someone who likes to make deals."

Jefferson rolled his eyes, moving to stand behind Alice's arm chair – an unconscious sign of support. "How about we don't toy with our food, today - He's Rumplestiltskin."

_Subtle, _Alice thought. Deals. Mr _Gold_. "Did Regina send you?"

"Does it matter?" asked Gold. "She's behind bars thanks to some clever maneuvering from you. I'd say there was only one person you have to worry about now."

"You."

"Yes."

Alice leant back and felt the cold density of the gun dig into her pelvic bone. Her fingers bit into the arms of the chair as her brain tried to simultaneously process information and calculate what her next move. She saw a beginning and she saw an end. She just didn't know which was where.

"So what can you tell me about Wonderland?"

"We can talk about that –"

"Talk then," Jefferson grated out, impatiently; his voice was wound as tight as the springs in the watch he wore round his neck.

Gold diverted his gaze from Alice to the man behind her. He raised an eyebrow. "My, you're more hostile than I seem to remember."

"One of the many pitfalls of being cursed for twenty eight years."

Alice felt a prick of disbelief. "Wait." She twisted in her seat, looking up at Jefferson and then at Gold. "You two know each other? In – in the other world?"

"We were business partners…" Jefferson muttered unwillingly, not looking at her. His glare could have burned a hole in the other man's head. "Once."

"If it helps, I always liked you." The corner of Gold's mouth lifted. "Lived by your wits."

_And unfortunately wits have an end, and he reached his long ago, _Alice thought. _Maybe thirty eight years ago, in fact. _

She assessed Gold warily for a minute. Long, clever fingers grasped his walking cane tightly. He was smart, and he knew it. Probably smarter than Alice. He was a man that knew and thoroughly understood three simple words: _knowledge was power. _Here was a man with one eye constantly on the bigger picture, a man with metaphorical fingers on buttons, a man who always, always had a plan.

Here was a man who had forgotten the simplicity with which such plans could be foiled. As simple as pulling a trigger.

"The cat and the rabbit –" she said, finally.

"I can make those go away."

"By locking me up in a cell for the rest of my life? I don't think so."

"You're entitled to your opinions."

It was Gold's turn to watch Alice now. The gun felt like it was searing a brand into her skin. She wondered if he could see the outline of it through her jumper; looking down to check would have given her away. She met his gaze resolutely. "I'm going to ask you a question, Miss Liddell," he said, finally, "that I know you won't know the answer to, but that I'm going to go ahead and ask it anyway – just to prove a point: do you know who keeps sending the rabbit looking for you?"

"No. Should I?"

"They're not someone you really want to meet. People who come across them tend to find themselves in difficult situations…" his eyes drifted to Jefferson and lingered on the scarf round his neck. "…they tend to find themselves headless, in fact."

The effect was immediate, though the consequence was not felt for several seconds. Outside twigs held up a roof of blue sky and a feeble sun. The silence radiating from the man behind her was tense and vicious and when he spoke his voice was thick. "What could the Queen of Hearts possibly want with Alice?"

"It doesn't matter because we're never going to find out," Alice snapped, "she's not going to get to me."

Gold sat forward in his chair with his forearms across his knees; a triangle with his cane at its tip. He shook his head. "You're not paying attention."

"Maybe I just don't believe what you're saying."

"Yes you do – because you've seen his neck." Gold said, indicating to Jefferson. "You've seen the rabbit. You've seen magic…There's the blind, Miss Liddell, and the willfully blind."

She tried to not shiver as she heard the echo of the cat in his words. "Fine. So who is she? This Queen of Hearts? The ultimate crazy in a crazy world?"

"I don't think that's how you would describe her."

"How would you describe her?"

Jefferson leant forward, placing his chin on the top of Alice's armchair. "I guess you could say she doesn't have a heart," he interrupted. His mouth twitched, as if he were trying not to laugh.

Alice raised an eyebrow at Gold. "He's right," he said. "Let me make this clear to you: you can't run from this woman. She won't stop looking for you. Ever."

"Doesn't exactly sound good for either of our plans."

"The difference is. Mine'll work."

"You keep telling yourself that." She hesitated. Impatience narrowed her eyes. "Why are you telling me all of this?"

"These are the cards you have drawn, Alice. S'far as I can see it, you have only two options. I guarantee that coming with me will work out the better of the two for all of us. I think if you understand the position you're in, it'll make my job easier. You're a smart girl. I think that you know that you're not cut out for any of this."

"Well, we'll see, won't we?"

For the first time, real anger broke the calm and business-like façade of Gold's face. "You're not _listening _to me," he snarled.

"On the contrary I think I've listened really good. Enough to know that I'm not coming with you."

Jefferson laughed out loud.

Gold did not laugh. "Glad to see you're deriving some amusement from the situation, old friend."

"Sometimes it's nice to watch _old friends_ be denied what they most want," Jefferson returned, walking out from behind Alice's chair to stand in front of the mantelpiece. "Especially you."

Gold stood, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. He paused in the doorway on his way out of the room. "Do you know how long it took me to find you, Miss Liddell?"

"No."

"About a day."

"You might not find me so easily next time."

"No, I might not. But then again, that might be because you're already in Wonderland…be warned: this is me asking nicely. Come with me now. It's the smart thing to do, and I think you know that. Next time, I'm not going to ask so nicely."

Gold gave her a moment, and when he realized she wasn't going to say anything, turned and left.

Something boiled up inside Alice. Something alien and cold and strangely calm. She took the gun out of her waistband pocket and walked out of the room after him, her strides covering the hall purposefully. "Alice!" Jefferson yelled, running after her.

She shoved open the door so hard it banged into the wall and stood on the top step and leveled the gun at the back of Gold's head. He was half way to his car, about ten paces away from her.

He stood perfectly still but did not turn round. "This isn't a film, dearie. You're not going to use that on me. Not with out your crazy companion to tell you how to use it. Put it down."

Alice barely heard him. "Give me three good reasons why I shouldn't just put a bullet through your brain right now."

"Because you don't know whether I've got someone placed to hurt the ones you love should I not return from this house."

There was an audible click as Alice flicked the safety off. "Alice…" said Jefferson, from behind her.

"Shut up," she snapped at him, her heart racing, and then to Gold: "My family are dead. There's no one for you to threaten. Second reason. Go."

"Because you don't want to go to Wonderland and the only way out of it is coming with me."

"I don't know, Gold, Wonderland is looking pretty tempting right now compared to spending the rest of my days in a box. Last chance to persuade me why I shouldn't pull this trigger."

Her palms were sweaty. Finally, Gold turned round. His shoes crackled on the dead autumn leaves lying in a carpet round his feet. The morning was crisp and sunny and foggy all at once. Almost poetic.

"For the same reason he didn't kill Regina," Gold said, finally, pointing at Jefferson with his walking stick: "you don't have it in you."

He smirked. A winning smile.

_Fine,_ thought Alice. It would be his death-mask. He finger twitched, about to pull the trigger of the gun, but some invisible, moral barrier held her back. She moved to fire the gun again, but found she couldn't. She stood, frozen and horrified.

Mr Gold pulled his car keys out of his coat pocket and juggled them in one hand several times. He looked up at Alice, unfazed by the weapon in her hands. "It was…a pleasure to finally talk to you, Miss Liddell."

He limped over to his vehicle and drove off. Alice was left staring at an empty driveway.

…_These are the cards you have drawn, Alice. S'far as I can see it, you have only two options…_

She whirled back round and pushed the gun into Jefferson's hands. "Take it."

"What the hell was that?"

"Something different."

She was walking back into the house, running a hand through her hair. "Why give me the gun?" he asked her.

Up the stairs. To her room. "Because bad boys like bad girls and I don't want you to jump me."

"Funny."

He watched as she started to throw clothes back into her bags. She'd barely unpacked, it was a quick process. "What are you doing?"

She kept her back to him determinedly, stuffing her Blackberry into the back pocket of her jeans. "I'm leaving."

"You don't have to do that."

"Yes I do. There's always somebody who knows where you are – and why – for the most part."

Jefferson raised an eyebrow. "Is this you finding God?"

That made her smile; enough that she turned round to look at him. "I'm talking about you."

"I'm sorry, I –"

She slung one bag over her shoulder. "It's okay. But I have to go."

"Where?"

"Somewhere he won't find me again. I don't know."

He grabbed her arm as she tried to push past him to the door and held her close. "That's good. Say it again."

"What?"

"Say it again. I don't know."

"I don't know."

She looked up at him. Blue eyes like chinks of sky - confused and slightly amused. The corner of Jefferson's mouth lifted. "You need to practice that. It sounds good on you."

She stepped away, whirling her car keys round her finger. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah."

She looked at her feet and shook her head and smiled.

He followed her back downstairs. Her ghost with a ghost. There was something hovering in the air but it wasn't put into words.

Alice stood at the door, autumn framing her like a picture. Jefferson was standing away from her at the bottom of the stairs and she realized that she didn't want to leave him on his own in this big old house with only Rose haunting his footsteps.

She walked down the steps she'd tried to shoot Gold on just minutes before to her car and got in and just sat there for a second. She couldn't name the feeling. It was what had her just sitting there instead of starting the car. Sadness mixed with something more bitter.

She looked back at the house but realized that Jefferson had already shut the door.

She started the car.

* * *

**A/N **My longest chapter to date and probably my favorite. I'd been looking forward to writing this scene for absolutely _ages_ – the scene between Jefferson and Gold and Alice.

You guys probably weren't expecting Alice to leave Jefferson so early on in the story, but rest assured: he'll be back.

Please remember to **review** with your thoughts on this chapter!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	14. Chapter 13

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 13**

* * *

The sun streamed in to the police station. The view out the window was almost operatic – not that Regina could see it. The day was golden and clear and cold. It was November the first, the trees had nearly all shed their leaves and stood in rows as stolid, delicate skeletons – only the fir trees marching out on the outskirts of town had kept their green.

The sound of Mr Gold pulling a chair up to the bars of her cell cut the room in half. Wood against wood. Annoying, but when it came to friction and information, Gold was an addict.

"So?"

"She's stupider or smarter than I imagined," he said. "Maybe an uncommon mixture of both. She wouldn't come with me."

"You found her?"

"With the Hatter…as you predicted."

A sneer curled Regina's lips. She got up from her bed and paced the cell like a caged animal. Once again, she reflected that conducting her affairs and business from a cell did not suit her. How Gold had managed it for years escaped her. She wanted space, her office, her house. The sooner Alice Liddell was out of the way and the evidence was destroyed, the better.

"So then why isn't she in here and not me if you've found her?"

"Funnily enough, she didn't seem too eager to hand herself in."

"Well then _force _her to hand herself in."

Gold adjusted himself on the hard wooden chair and slouched back casually, his cane laid out across his knees. He did not reply.

Regina's eyes narrowed. "I hope your lack of results isn't an indication of your quitting. This isn't a Saturday job you can resign from just with the drop of a pin."

"Patience. I know that Miss Liddell will hand herself in and I know where the envelope will be by the end of today."

"And where will that be?"

"It will be brought to me and placed at my feet."

Regina scoffed and shook her head, but her interest was piqued despite herself. Gold's voice betrayed little; his tone as conversational as if he were discussing another business deal. Quietly confident. A man who promised results. "How can you be so sure?" she asked, suspiciously.

"Because we do not change, your majesty. No matter what world we live in. Oh, the wrappings on the outside may be a little different – your name might have been adapted, you might lead an entirely different life, but underneath, the heart beats the same as it always did. You still feel the same feelings of greed, lust for what you cannot have, love."

"Your point?"

He smirked and stood. "That the old methods still apply. The easiest way to get someone to do what you want them to do…is to hurt the thing they love the most."

* * *

Being on the run did not feature in the ordinary repertoire of a sane human's experience. It wasn't uncommon – but the movies made it look more glamorous than it was. Alice was sure there were people who would fare far better than she had, though.

She checked into Granny's Bed and Breakfast at 3.30 in the afternoon, and then paid an eighteen year old kid to book a room in the Sunny Hotel on the edge of town under the name Irene Nesser.

She picked the key up off of him and then went up to her room via the stairs round the back. Room 20.

She closed the threadbare lace curtains and fastened the chain on the door and then stood on her bed and pulled off the air vent grill and tucked her passport and driver's license inside the hole, holding the screws between her teeth carefully.

Her Dad had been a bit of a handyman – a fisherman, by trade – but he'd always been tinkering round the house, fixing up the previous owners DIY botch jobs and leaky pipes. Alice could remember when he'd tried to take her out fishing when she was sixteen; a gloomy reservoir for the weekend, when she could have been in Storybrooke with her friends. 'Give a person a fish, Alice, and you feed them for the day,' he used to say. 'Teach them to fish, and you feed them for life.' He'd been full of tradesman aphorisms, her Dad.

Neither of her parents had been particularly smart. They'd stopped being able to help with her homework when she hit fifth grade…her Mom had actually cried with pride when Alice told her she'd got a job as a lawyer. Then, three months later, the car crash. Nick. Breaking up with Nick. The new apartment. The rabbit. Jefferson. And here. Now.

She replaced the grill and lay on the bed and just stared up at the asbestos ceiling for a while. The plain brown paint was completely different to the eccentrically patterned wallpaper in Jefferson's house.

_Fuck_, Alice though, closing her eyes tightly, conjuring up images of the mansion, _why did you leave_?

She couldn't stay in the room any longer, so she got back up again and grabbed her bag and her coat and pulled on her heels.

Outside, there was the distant rushing of the sea that even now dragged back memories of egg sandwiches and milky coffee and the smell of fish. Sentimentally, probably, drew her to a café that overlooked the beach and the harbor. She sat outside, despite the cold, and ordered a tea and a tuna sandwich, making sure to draw as little attention to herself as possible.

It took a few minutes, and then the gum-chewing waitress sat her tray down in front of her with out giving Alice a second glance. A little knot uncoiled in her stomach.

The sky was groily with clouds of donnish white and dug up porcelain. Alice looked at her food; the limp sandwich and a styrofoam cup of hot water with tea bleeding out into it.

She suddenly found that she wanted to cry as she squeezed the tea bag with her plastic fork and lit a cigarette to stop the waterworks from flowing. She took a long drag – as exquisite as being shot – and looked out over the waves until the lump in her throat diminished.

What were her options now? Wait out Regina's trial until she could go home? By her knowledge that could take anywhere between two weeks to two months – and Gold had warned her that this Queen of Hearts was going to keep coming for her; and for what? What did she possibly have to offer her?

What the _hell _was all this about?

Her appetite was gone by the time she'd finished smoking and thinking and she looked down at the wreckage of her tuna sandwich that she'd mauled to pieces with her fork with out even realizing. The tea was lukewarm, too.

Her fault for smoking – didn't they say that cigarette's killed your appetite?

Her Blackberry buzzed three times on the table, vibrating the whole damn thing. The table gave a rickety shake on unstable legs and the cup went over, spilling murky brown liquid everywhere. Alice swore and answered the call.

"What?"

"Hello Miss Liddell."

Her heart went into contraction. It was Mr Gold.

She stopped trying to mop up the spilt tea with paper-thin napkins and straightened upright.

"I think I made it perfectly clear this morning –"

"Oh, you did. But I think that _I _made it perfectly clear this morning that I wasn't going to ask nicely again for you to hand yourself in."

"And this is you asking again."

"Indeed."

Alice pressed her lips tightly together. "Are you tracking this call?"

"Yes."

"So I can't run."

"It would be inadvisable…for everyone involved."

"What's the supposed to mean?"

"That you are going to phone Jefferson; that you are going to phone Sheriff Swan; that you are going to phone Miss Blanchard - and that you are going to tell them all to meet at the harbor at 5 o clock, and for Miss Blanchard to bring the envelope with her."

"And why would I do that?"

"Look across the road, Miss Liddell." Alice turned round, glaring suspiciously up and down the street. "To your left," Gold instructed.

She looked past the few trees meant to spruce up the street and saw a nondescript, dark Cadillac parked up onto the curb.

The driver's door opened and a foot appeared, then the end of a cane. Alice swallowed heavily.

Gold stepped out of the car and turned to face her. At this distance, she could just make out the phone clamped to his ear.

"You see, Miss Liddell, as I'm sure your friend the Hatter will have told you that he learnt to his own cost, when you play a card game, you've got to be aware of all the cards in play."

He opened the back door of the car and Alice thought that she might vomit up the tiny amount of food she'd eaten.

Huddled in the back seat, scared, wide-eyed and terrified, was Grace.

* * *

**A/N **I know, I know – very short chapter – but this was just too gooder cliff-hanger to pass up on. Thank you for all your amazing reviews (**angelofire**, thank you so much for saying that I've captured character; it's something I worry over obsessively) I'm extremely grateful to all my readers who have shown an interest in this fic.

No Jefferson this chapter, but we got Grace – albeit not in the best of circumstances. It was a nasty trick of Gold's to get at Alice through Jefferson but I loved it ;)

Please **review**!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine _


	15. Chapter 14

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 14**

* * *

The kettle wheezed and whistled and then clicked.

Mary Margaret didn't make any move to fetch it – in fact; she didn't give any indication that she was aware of the apartment around her. Her sole focus was the door across the room from her, and for that reason she was able to detect the sound of someone walking outside in the corridor seconds before there was the grating noise of a key turning in the lock.

She gave up her hunched position at the table and headed for the door. Emma burst through when she was only meters away.

"Emma –"

"Mary Margaret – "

They stared at each other for several seconds. Emma's Sheriff badge was still pinned to her belt; she'd just come from work. It said a lot about the situation that someone whose job it was to move from one crisis to the next had forgone all of it for this one, shattering emergency.

"She phoned you, too, didn't she?" Emma said, seriously.

"Yes."

"Then you know."

"Yes."

Her hands balled into fists at her sides. "This is sick."

Mary Margaret folded her arms, as if trying to prevent some part of herself from floating away. She thought that she might understand how the wives left behind during the Second World War felt. She'd not gone a day since Alice left with out thinking of her – with out constantly checking her phone for the call she both yearned for and feared.

When, finally, it had come, it had only been to give a date and a time and a location; even imparting a small, emotionless _I'm sorry. _

_Today. The Harbor. 5 o clock. _

_- Bring the evidence. Don't try anything. _

Mary Margaret could not comprehend how evil could beat good; and beat good so thoroughly. Remembering Alice's deadened tone as she told her what had to be done, she couldn't help but wish that she was _stronger_; was something more than she was now. She wished the same fury would burn in her like it was burning in Emma, but all she could feel was a kind of pathetic, numb acceptance.

Somehow, she found herself thinking of David Nolan, the coma patient at the hospital.

How had she – how had _Alice _– been so stupid as to think they would win? Life was unfair. Happy endings did not exist.

This kind of end for Alice; immoral, illegal and unjust made _sense_. It was right and it fit. Going against the nature of things never worked.

She wished it wasn't true.

But it was.

* * *

Five o' clock and freezing.

Clouds began to ink out the sun and Alice watched two lovers and a big brown Labrador walk down the beach below her. The man kept whispering things to the woman, and she kept laughing or would nuzzle her face into the hollow place between his shoulder and neck. The dog wanted them to throw a stick. It would alternate between chasing waves up and down the sand and jumping up excitedly at their waists.

Alice felt her heart ache.

Unbelievable.

It took the end of her life to realize what she wanted.

No, she could concede, she didn't want the dog. She was a cat person.

The fuzzy cuddliness between the couple she would normally have dismissed. If you'd asked her a few years ago – days ago, even – if she'd wanted that, she would have said no. Sure, it would be nice to be in her naïve early twenties again, but history was full of people's desires and 'loving' someone she knew now was not the simple, pure thing she had thought it had been back then. Love made people do selfish, moronic, cruel things. To be in love would be to be at the mercy of someone elses desires.

So by some little joke of God, why, then, did she want 'love' back? Why now?

Mr Gold stood next to her, his hands firmly placed atop his cane. Alice knew people like him. Her clients were – had - often been people like him.

There was something that existed separate inside of them – something not entirely human. Beyond their thoughts of wives, children and carnal urges, beyond the scar tissue of loss and regret, there was a creature whose heart beat only on deals and trades, entirely devoid of emotion or compassion.

Normally, these people who Alice met were businessmen or other, hard-line lawyers.

But Gold didn't have these external, human traits of a wife and children, as far as she could tell, he didn't have any basic human urges and had never lost or been defeated in anything. He derived no pleasure from victory.

There was nothing left for this creature to hide behind. For Gold, it was not buried beneath, it was lying on the surface – it was all there was to him now.

"You're a monster," Alice said.

His face tightened marginally; enough for her to know that the basis of what he would say next would be entirely insincere. "I've been called a monster many times in my life, dearie, I can think of being named worse things."

"No you can't."

He ignored her and checked his watch. How curious, Alice thought. She'd hated Jefferson's pocketwatch and everything it stood for, but she found herself wishing more than anything that it was here now. Unmoving, unchanging. Gold's watch ticked inexorably to the next moment; the next event. It was 5.02.

"They're late," he said, crisply, shrugging the sleeve of his suit back over the watch face.

Of course they were. Jefferson couldn't drive – he would have walked. Emma would be trying to devise some plan to save her, and Mary Margaret, ever the voice of rationality, would be pointing out the impossibility of it to her.

Of course they would all be late.

Alice leant forward over the railings as if the sea held some kind of physical pull over her. She could hear the sound of piledrivers and jackhammers working away behind the warehouses of their secluded little spot at the harbor – a stunning reminder of life's normalcy just out of her view, bustling away on the main road.

She had succeeded phenomenally in not looking at the car in which Grace sat. In fact, it had been far too easy to convince herself that the girl wasn't there.

If she had started thinking about Grace, she would think about all the reasons as to why Gold had taken her, and then her heart would start to ache again.

The couple and their dog walked out of her line of sight.

Her back hurt. It shouldn't pain her like this, not at her age.

Emma and Mary Margaret arrived at 5.06. The moment Emma's yellow beetle pulled up next to one of the warehouses, five men dressed all in black materialized at different strategic points with in the area. Alice scoffed.

Jefferson arrived at 5.08.

Somehow, Alice instinctively knew that he'd bought the gun. She could see it on his face as she took in the unruly hair; the heavy boots and pale skin turned almost white from years of a life indoors. His dark eyes lingered on her face for a moment, and then the expression in them changed as they moved to Gold's - turning flinty and cold. He hovered slightly to the side, away from Emma and Mary Margaret. His stance was agitated and tense.

Gold must have seen this all too, or he must have seen the look on Emma's face, because he said: "there's not going to be any fighting. I like my deal transactions to be as smooth and as faultless as possible. You hand over the evidence against Regina, and I take Miss Liddell."

"I was under the impression this was a hostage negotiation," ground out Emma, stepping forwards. Mary Margaret held her back.

"You were under the right impression, but you see, Sheriff, this isn't a negotiation for Alice." Gold signaled at one of the men and they walked over to the Cadillac and pulled Grace out of the back of the car.

"_NO!" _Jefferson yelled, the primitive cry torn out from somewhere with in him. "_NO!" _

He ran and Alice managed to tackle him hard enough to know him to the floor. They struggled – a whirlwind of heavy coats and fear and anger – "_GRACE!_" he yelled again, and Alice found she barely had the strength to match his – could barely look him in the eye because the pain there would have broken her. "_You __**bastard**_**,**" he snarled at Gold, unseeing as the older man shifted to reveal a gun holster strapped underneath his suit. "_GRACE_!_"_

"Miss Blanchard?", the girl choked out through scared tears. Her eyes found the only person she knew among the crowd of strangers. " – Miss Blanchard, what's going on? What's happening?" The man in black was holding onto her arm tightly and as Jefferson struggled harder, so she began to, too. "_Miss Blanchard_!"

"Paige, everything's going to be okay, honey," Mary Margaret said, in a masterfully calm voice. "Don't struggle. Everything's going to be fine."

But it was Jefferson that stopped struggling, not Grace. He froze so suddenly that Alice continued to use all her strength to hold him down for several seconds, even when he wasn't fighting anymore.

He suddenly began to chuckle; which then turned to full blown laughter. "Paige," he marveled, looking up at Alice. Her stomach twisted. "_Paige_."

He was laughing so hard now that tears came and only the crown of his head touched the ground, his neck arched so that Alice could see the scar underneath his cravat. "Not Grace," he said, almost choking on his laughter. "_Paige_, you idiot_._"

His daughter's gaze slipped fearfully to the crazy man lying meters away from her, but Jefferson didn't see.

Alice's hands left his shoulders as if she'd been burned and she scrambled up off of him, backing away. She was shaking, she realized, so hard that she almost couldn't speak. "I'm sorry," she whispered, covering her mouth with her hands. Her eyes pricked with tears as she watched Jefferson's madness and understood it for the first time. "Oh my God, I'm _sorry_."

_This is _your _fault, Alice_.

Her eyes searched round desperately for something – anything – until they rested on the envelope clutched in Mary Margaret's hands. Her friend caught the direction of her gaze, and she looked from the brown paper envelope to Alice's face.

"Alice, no," she said, her voice wobbling. "_No._"

"I think she wants you to give up the evidence, Miss Blanchard," Gold said, smoothly, I suggest you do it."

"_No_." Emma, now. Mary Margaret's denial fed her own, though it blazed up stronger. "Like hell we will."

It wasn't so much the content of Emma's words as the conviction behind them that made Alice stare. Any person that stood for law enforcement would possess the kind of moral outrage that Emma did, but there was something deeper in the tone of her voice that told Alice that this - that all this crap - went further than that. That maybe _they _went further than two woman who had met by coincidence a few days ago.

"Emma…" Alice was surprised by the way she had to squeeze the words out through a lump in her throat.

Emma's eyes flashed and she walked over to Alice, her face taut with emotion. "You helped me once. You _wanted _me to have Henry. You wanted to beat Regina – don't give up, not now. _Don't_."

"I wanted Henry to have his best change, Emma - and that was with you, and now I want to give Grace her best chance, too. Kids deserve that."

Emma's eyes glassed over - not quite tears, but something close. "She's called _Paige_, Alice. That's not his kid, he's crazy." She suddenly grabbed Alice's arms as if she were going to shake sense into her. "You can't actually believe in this curse that Henry's talking about?! There's not other world's out there: there's just this one, and just this life and you are _throwing it away – _you don't owe him _anything_!"

Emma was right, she probably didn't.

But Alice took the envelope from Mary Margaret anyway and threw it out to sea and watched as the brown paper split and spilled, sending a multitude of documents floating through the air and disappearing into to the waves like a pack of playing cards.

She allowed Gold to steer her by her elbow into the back of the car; watched with hollow eyes the similar hollow-eyed looks on Mary Margaret and Emma's faces as Paige ran past her father and into her school-teacher's protective arms. Alice reflected, dimly, that Mary Margaret looked good hugging a child.

Emma was right. Emma usually was. Alice didn't owe Jefferson anything, and as the car pulled off of the curb; Gold tucked into the back seat opposite Alice, she turned to him.

"How did you know?" she asked – her own voice sounding strangely distant to her ears - "…how did you know that using Grace would work?"

He allowed himself a smile, and repeated the words he had told Regina days ago (because what did history do but repeat itself?; father's lost their children again, families were torn apart again, evil won, again). "Because the easiest way to get someone to do what you want them to do…is to hurt the thing they love the most. And how better to hurt him, than to take his own daughter?"

She tried to ignore the pain those words caused her - like a physical internal wound - and looked out of the window, at the dour main street through Storybrooke as they made their way back towards the hospital and her cell underneath it.

She looked at the fallen autumn leaves covering up cracks in pavements, at the various shops, at Dr Hopper walking Pongo down the road; at Ruby and Granny as they shut up the diner for an early evening. Why did they get the lives they got here, and she got this one? Why was she stuck to face her life out rotting in a cell?

Was it chance? Fate? Pre-determined events?

Why had her birth parents left her? Why had her adopted parents died? Had their whole lives been leading up to that car crash, or was it really, as the doctor's had called it, a 'freak accident'? Why had Alice met Nick, Robert, Mary Margaret - Jefferson? Was it her choice to meet those people, or was it fate or, as Graham sometimes said, had she met them before in a past life?

Why had the Queen of Hearts chosen her? Was the presence of magic some kind of indication that there could be a greater force driving them from event to event?

As Alice stared back along the long line of her life, she realized it she had never had that...a choice. Her life had been all reaction and -

- Alice suddenly caught a glimpse of a white rabbit standing motionless on the corner of the road and she paused.

And then her heart began to beat very rapidly.

What did history do but repeat itself?

Before she knew what she was doing, she'd thrown open the car door whilst it was still moving – Gold yelling after her – and dodged through traffic; off like a loaded sprinter.

Somehow, she knew exactly where she was going, though she could no longer see the rabbit. Run. Down the street. Back towards that small alley wedged between the hardware and corner shop. She was filled with the kind of reckless, exhilarated feeling that she had had when she'd been with Jefferson, driving to his house to go into hiding.

She skidded to a stop at the side-street's mouth and peered down past trash bins to its dead-end. Instead of gloomy shadows, there was an electric blue vortex swirling, slightly bigger than the average rabbit hole.

Despite herself, Alice felt herself grin.

Gold had said he saw two options for her. She saw three.

She saw a choice.

She walked forwards and stood inches from the portal and reached her hand out to touch its depths. It felt like cold electricity and thick, soupy, hot water all at the same time. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise as she stared magic in the face.

What was it the cat had asked her? _Why do we do anything_?

She took a deep breath and stepped through.

* * *

**A/N **So…thoughts?

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	16. Chapter 15

**A/N WARNING**: language is worse than usual here, but us Brits, what can I say?

* * *

**ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND**

* * *

**CHAPTER 15**

* * *

Who was tugging on her arm?

Something gave a sharp and abrupt pull on her hand and Alice was suddenly detached from the physical world and falling. She felt a clutch of panic in her stomach.

She imagined herself in the tight little tube of a plane's fuselage, strapped in, going down towards the ground. The whiteness that surrounded her made the blood rage up behind her eyes and her ears ring with silence. Her stomach dropped with her body, though it felt as if she were suspended in some vast vacuum of white-space and nothingness.

Alice opened her mouth to let out a scream of fear when there was a resounding sound of something making impact – that would be her - and pain lanced through her body.

Her arm throbbed but the relief was absolute. She allowed her fingers to uncurl out of the tight, panicked fist they'd made and pressed her palm flat against the solid reality of the ground beneath her.

A childhood image floated before her fuzzy eyes; her father grabbing her arm to point to a sea eagle breaking away from the still autumn air - slicing into the water and trailing loose, blowsy plumage.

Something switched itself off, maybe the persistent ringing in her ears, and Alice became aware of other noises. The sight of the eagle and the sea melted away before her eyes and she saw for the first time the elderly man crouched over her. Slightly overweight, with brilliant, red cheeks. Santa Clause with out the beard or love of humanity.

"Ruddy bleedin' Nora, love," he was saying with an old-school English accent that reminded Alice of Bagheera from The Jungle Book, only, he couldn't seem to decide whether to be irate or compassionate. "What the hell are you doing 'ere?"

"You know," she rasped, through a splitting headache, "I'm beginning to ask myself the same thing."

Alice winced and began to struggle to sit herself up. Her arm was still complaining loudly, but everything else was functioning fine.

She looked around. They seemed to be in some kind of pantry, except the shelves weren't just full of preserves and foods and meats, but also maps; books and a general assortment of clutter. At eye level opposite her was a jar almost as big as a small child labeled 'ORANGE MARMALADE'.

She swallowed the dryness in her throat. "This is going to sound crazy," she said, "but have you seen a white rabbit come through here?"

"What do I look like to you, girl, Pocahontas?"

Alice glared up at the surly man, but found that her anger slipped when she took in his decidedly Victorian-era garments – a brown vest over a neat, pin-striped shirt and a white, dirty apron. His hair was beginning to thin a little on top of his head, but it still sprouted thick and white on his face in decidedly bristly mutton-chops.

He must have seen the shock and confusion on Alice's face because his expression softened and he sighed, offering her a large, meaty hand. "First-time portal jumper, eh? I gotta say, you could've done better than landing in my cellar, darlin'."

"You can control where you land?" she asked, taking the offered hand and letting him pull her to her feet. The exertion of the task made the old man's red face even redder than before and Alice's head swim.

He waved a hand at her. "This world-travel crap will fry your brain like an egg. Best not to think about it." He glanced at her and grabbed his chin. "Blimey you're going to have one hell of a black eye there."

"That's the least of my problems," Alice dismissed, though she could already feel her right eye socket bruising. "Is there anywhere I could get a glass of water?"

"You'll be wanting something stronger than that, love – come on."

She was suspicious, but he was serious. He led her up a few steps and out of the cellar. It turned out that she hadn't landed in the basement of his house, but in the basement of his pub. The room was packed wall to wall with noise, smoke, grumblings and – to Alice – antiques, except, judging by the man's clothing, these weren't antiques at all. This was present-day fashion and furniture.

She felt immediately conspicuous in denim jeans.

Her guide seemed to be some kind of local celebrity. There were a few general shouts of "Charlie!" as he led her through the crowd and behind the bar.

"So, what's it like?" he asked, gruffly, as he fixed her up a whisky.

"What's what like?"

"Where-ever it is yer've come from, girl. Most definitely ain't Wonderland – don't touch those," he added, as Alice reached out for one of the many small, blue vials on the shelves behind him. She just had time to read _EUPHORIA _on the tiny, hand-written label of one before he snapped the cabinet doors shut, blocking them from her view.

"It's different, I guess."

Charlie gave her a leveled, steely gaze - that kind of no-nonsense look all bartenders had patented. "What's it called?"

Alice winced, mostly at the question but also at the whisky as it burned down her throat. "Earth."

He scratched at his whiskers thoughtfully. "Don't think I ain't ever heard of a pub from 'Earth'."

"Jesus Christ, Charlie, is that all you got t'think about?" said a man hunched on the other side of the bar. He was tall and gangly; in his late thirties with an ugly scar in the shape of a diamond round his left eye. Alice was pretty sure that from where she was standing she could see the hilts of a dagger and sword at his waist. "Ya ain't got nowt else goin' on up there?"

"_The White Knight_'s been in my family _six_ generations," Jackie flared up, going red. He thrust a finger to point at the coat of arms hanging on the wall above the heads. It had a white and red chessboard background, with a gleaming knight on a rearing, white horse at its center. "I could throw yer sorry ass outa here for good, Jacques."

"Don't be daft, man, you'd have to shut down within a week." The man called Jacques drained the last few inches of his pint and then nodded to Alice. "Who's the girl?"

"Dunno, some portal-jumper, ain't ya, love?"

"Yes." Alice tapped her fingers on the stained wooden bar bench and glanced between the two men, weighing them up. "You know," she said, carefully; deliberately, "it's funny how Fate works. I was aiming for the Queen of Hearts and yet…here I am."

Jacques eyes pierced her uncomfortably – so light and so grey that it felt as if you could look through him, and to whatever was left inside. For once, Alice felt as if she had said the wrong thing; made the wrong judgment call. Her fingers tightened round the glass of whisky. "Hear that, Charlie?" he said, slowly, a smile starting to tug at the corner of his mouth. "She wants to go to see the Queen of Hearts."

"You could help me?"

"Charlie 'ere fancies himself as a bit of a knight, anyway, and I'm goin' up to the palace tomorrow."

"Why?"

Charlie coughed, grimly. He didn't look up from the dirty glass he was cleaning with an equally dirty rag. "He's got his trial, doesn't he?" he said. "He's goin' t'see if he can keep that ugly-mug head of 'is."

* * *

Grace's tea party. He was going to be late. He couldn't be…

There was a mechanism in Jefferson that had him waking seconds before the alarm clock could do its job and beep him awake. Every morning, with out fail – no matter how much whisky he'd drunk the night before.

That had been a horrible, horrible dream. He couldn't remember the details. He didn't really want to. He could just remember Grace, and Grace's tea party.

How many times had he dreamed about his daughter? He could keep a dream diary, but after the same nightmare for twenty eight years, that could get boring. Repeated words through a multitude of pages. _Grace, Paige, Rose. Grace, Paige, Rose. _He could picture it now, the rambling's of a crazy man. What did history do but repeat itself?

He heaved himself out of bed and pulled on a polo-neck jumper before he could look at himself in the mirror. Another life, another day. There were no clocks but Jefferson could see in his mind's eye as the second hand glided around. The minute hand clicked again. Time reeling in his life like kite strings. Useless, wasted time.

His face felt cracked and ready to fall off. He had a splitting headache.

Rose was lying in the bed, looking up at him. She slept on her side, everything curled up into a tiny ball. Alice had slept on her front. The urge to reach out and touch his wife was consuming, but if he kept her at arm's length, he could just pretend that she was real; he could convince himself that thirty eight years had not been spent with out her.

Her silence was resentful. He'd learnt to read her moods through her silence, even when she was alive. She'd never said when she was angry, or upset, or scared, but he'd learnt to read the emotions in her, anyway. He'd really loved her.

"For God's sake," Jefferson snapped, as he watched Rose take in the air-plane crash of broken glasses and bottles that littered his bedroom floor. "I've had a lot on my mind!"

More resentful silence.

He walked out of the room, leaving her there. She'd always been obsessed with the little details and precision in the way small things moved; like the whirring cogs in the back of a hand-made pocket-watch, for instance. She'd had obsessions, as well. She read the same book over and over again. "_I thought the whole joy of reading was that you didn't know what happened next_," he'd asked, one evening, and she'd smiled, and turned another dog-eared, crumpled page as she lay in bed, waiting for him to join her. "_I don't know,_" she said, "_I just really like this book_."

She'd taught him the joy in the expected. Once, from a man who'd seen everything, he thought the only thrill in life came from new worlds, new jobs – new business transactions. Rose had rooted him back down. She'd fixed him up like one of her watches. Shown him that there was joy in coming home and knowing that she would be there. He could remember the nine months when he'd return home after weeks over being away and she'd be stood in front of the stove with a swollen belly, grinning like he'd only been gone a few hours.

It was just the little details like those that he liked to remember. The way she'd pester him to do the dishes, her bending over a tub of soapy water to do the washing; midnight feeds: the way she'd bounced Grace in her arms to sooth her cries.

Jefferson struggled to breath past the lump in his throat. He walked back into his room with a brush, and a deep bucket and cleared up the mess he'd made. Trying to fix things in the way she'd fixed him.

_I'm sorry_.

He placed the last chip of broken glass into the bucket and then checked his pocket watch as there was a knock on the front door.

He'd expected this. He'd made tea.

"Regina," he greeted her, opening his front door.

"Jefferson," she smiled. He imagined his hands closing round her throat, squeezing the life out of her. "I wonder if I could come in?"

He led her through to the sitting room and served the tea. She would appreciate the black irony of that.

It still made him wince to think of the first day he'd found himself here, how he'd gone to her house and begged and raged for her to send him and Grace back. He'd looked weak, pathetic. He'd been a shell of how she'd known him and for an instance he'd wished he'd been the man she'd first met him as. Eccentric, powerful.

But he was nothing with out the hat. The hat had been everything.

"What do you want?" he asked, as Regina made herself comfortable on the sofa opposite his.

She smiled again and clasped her small hands over her knees. "Alice Liddell escaped."

"You think she's with me."

"I have a feeling she isn't."

His stomach knotted. "Wonderland?"

Regina lifted her cup and took a sip. She lowered it back to its saucer. "I think so."

"So why are you here? You want to go after her? It's impossible."

"It could be."

"I'd say it is. You know better than anyone this is a land with out magic."

Regina raised an eyebrow. "As do you. Tell me, Jefferson, how many times is it now that you've tried to make that hat?"

He looked away and fisted a hand round the pocket watch. She watched the movement with a slight smirk on her face. "It must be hard to heal, when you can't feel time."

"I don't need to heal."

"Forgive me, but I seem to remember that you had a wife." His jaw clenched and Regina suddenly gave a wide, Cheshire-cat grin. "You haven't moved on, have you?"

"Have you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jefferson smirked. "Daniel."

They sat staring at each other for a while, at an impasse. Everything had changed but nothing had changed. He'd known her from the beginning, before she became all this. _What I would love for you, Regina_, he thought, _is a killing with intimacy._

He didn't have it in him.

Her face, which had marginally broken at Daniel's name, recollected itself. "Well, I can see that this isn't going to work," she said, standing smoothly.

He reached over and grabbed her arm tightly. Maybe there was a flicker of fear in her eyes, and he relished in the thought. "Enough mind games," Jefferson snarled. "Either tell me what the hell it is you want or get out of my house."

Funny, he'd once told Alice to get out. He hadn't meant it.

"Seeing as you asked so nicely," she said, sarcastically. "I want you to go to Wonderland and bring the girl back."

"I'd need the hat. I don't have it."

"But I do."

The breath was knocked out of him for a second. He saw the truth of the words in her eyes, and then he suddenly realized what this was. This was a test from the universe, to see if he would leave Grace again. He could prove himself this time. He could prove that he deserved her.

"I won't leave my daughter."

He wouldn't make the same mistake again. He wouldn't leave Grace.

Regina raised an eyebrow, brushing at some imaginary speck of dust on her sleeve. "I must say, Jefferson, the woman of your life are incredibly unfortunate: you're never there when they need you most."

Some mist fogged his eyes and his hand wrapped round her throat – tight enough to be a threat. Regina let out a choked gasp, her sharply manicured nails clawing at his eyes. "Leave." Jefferson said, pressing his face close to hers. "Now."

He released his grip on her throat and her petite body seemed to sag slightly. She glared at him, massaging her neck. "Fine. But I'm shocked that you won't life a_ finger_ to save the woman who gave her life up to protect your only daughter."

"You told me once that you don't abandon family."

"For that to hold true, Jefferson, you have to have a family to abandon. That little girl doesn't know you. To her, you're not her father."

He knew his face would be ultra-white; there was a cold sheen of sweat on his palms. "I'm not leaving her," he whispered, feeling sick. "Not again. Not ever."

Regina shrugged. "I see. Then I'll let myself out. Goodbye, Jefferson."

He watched her go. When the door slammed, he went over to his liquor cabinet and pulled out a vodka bottle.

He took a swig, feeling the familiar burn in his throat.

So that was there the hat had been all these years, Jefferson thought dimly. He took another mouthful, grimacing. He checked his pocket watch.

Unmoving, still.

Pretending that twenty eight wasted years of trying to make a hat and get his daughter back had never happened.

* * *

**A/N **I've got a ton of work at the moment, so I'm afraid updates have been a little slower. I hope you've all enjoyed this chapter – I've been toying with how I wanted to present Wonderland and all the characters' for a while now but I think I've pretty much got it sorted in my head now.

Thank you for all your lovely reviews. Sorry it took fifteen chapters for you to see how Alice got to Wonderland!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


End file.
